...tlil....                       M 

.ii.i<.ii:ii!!ii.nn:iiiii!lUttUttf|itll{Ui)iitiiiiiiMiii>>>iiii"''<>'>f''<'>iit<<>'>''                """ 

li 

THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 

GIFT  OF 


J,  Lorenz  Sporer 


Digitized  by  tine  Internet  Arciiive 

in  2007  witii  funding  from 

IVIicrosoft  Corporation 


littp://www.arcli  ive.org/details/arcadianadventurOOIeaciala 


ARCADIAN   ADVENTURES 
WITH    THE    IDLE    RICH 


BY  THE  SAME  AUTHOR 


BEHIND  THE  BEYOND 

NONSENSE  NOVELS 

LITERARY  LAPSES 

SUNSHINE  SKETCHES 

MOONBEAMS  FROM  THE 
LARGER  LUNACY 

ESSAYS  AND  LITERARY 
STUDIES 

FURTHER  FOOLISHNESS 


ARCADIAN 
ADVENTURES 

WITH  THE  IDLE  RICH 

BY      STEPHEN      LEACOCK 

AUTHOR       OF       "BEHIND       THE       BEYOND" 
"NONSENSE    NOVELS,"    "LITERARY  LAPSES,"   ETC. 


NEW  YORK:    JOHN   LANE   COMPANY 

LONDON:  JOHN  LANE,  THE  BODLEY  HEAD 

MCMXX 


COrraiOHT,  1914,  BY 

THE  CROWELL  PUBLISHING  COMPANY 


COPYRIGHT,  I914,  BY 

JOHN  LANE  COMPANY 


College 
XJbrarjr 


CONTENrS        "^ 


Chapter  Page 

I.    A   Little   Dinner   With   Mr.   Lucullus 

Fyshe '     .        9 

n.    The  Wizard  of  Finance        ....      48 

in.    The  Arrested  PmLANTHROpy  or  Mr.  Tom- 

LiNSON 77 

IV.    The  Yahi-Bahi  Oriental  Society  of  Mrs. 

Rasselyer-Brown 115 

V.    The  Love  Story  of  Mr.  Peter  Spillikins  .     156 

VI.    The  Rival  Churches  of  St.  Asaph  and  St. 

OsoPH 200 

VII.    The  Ministrations  or  the  Rev.  Utter- 
must  Dumfarthing 234 

Vin.    The  Great  Fight  for  Clean  Government    274 


ARCADIAN   ADVENTURES 
WITH    THE    IDLE    RICH 


Chapter  I. — A    Little   Dinner   with   Mr, 
Lucullus  Fyshe 

THE  Mausoleum  Club  stands  on  the 
quietest  corner  of  the  best  residen- 
tial street  in  the  City.  It  is  a  Gre- 
cian building  of  white  stone.  About 
it  are  great  elm  trees  with  birds — the  most  ex- 
pensive kind  of  birds — singing  in  the  branches. 
The  street  in  the  softer  hours  of  the  morning 
has  an  almost  reverential  quiet.  Great  mo- 
tors move  drowsily  along  it,  with  solitary  chauf- 
feurs returning  at  10.30  after  conveying  the 
earlier  of  the  millionaires  to  their  down-town 
offices.  The  sunlight  flickers  through  the  elm 
trees,  illuminating  expensive  nursemaids  wheel- 
ing valuable  children  in  little  perambulators. 
Some  of  the  children  are  worth  millions  and 
millions.  In  Europe,  no  doubt,  you  may  see  in 
the  Unter  den  Linden  avenue  or  the  Champs 
Elysees  a  little  prince  or  princess  go  past  with 
a  clattering  military  guard  to  do  honour.  But 
that  is  nothing.  It  is  not  half  so  impressive,  in 
the  real  sense,  as  what  you  may  observe  every 
morning  on  Plutoria  Avenue  beside  the  Mauso- 
leum  Club  in  the  quietest  part  of  the  city. 

9 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

Here  you  may  see  a  little  toddling  princess  In  a 
rabbit  suit  who  owns  fifty  distilleries  in  her  own 
right.  There,  in  a  lacquered  perambulator, 
sails  past  a  little  hooded  head  that  controls  from 
its  cradle  an  entire  New  Jersey  corporation. 
The  United  States  attorney-general  is  suing  her 
as  she  sits,  in  a  vain  attempt  to  make  her  dis- 
solve herself  into  constituent  companies.  Near 
by  Is  a  child  of  four,  in  a  khaki  suit,  who  repre- 
sents the  merger  of  two  trunk  line  railways. 
You  may  meet  in  the  flickered  sunlight  any 
number  of  little  princes  and  princesses  far  more 
real  than  the  poor  survivals  of  Europe.  Incal- 
culable Infants  wave  their  fifty-dollar  ivory  rat- 
tles In  an  inarticulate  greeting  to  one  another. 
A  million  dollars  of  preferred  stock  laughs 
merrily  in  recognition  of  a  majority  control  go- 
ing past  in  a  go-cart  drawn  by  an  imported 
nurse.  And  through  it  all  the  sunlight  falls 
through  the  elm-trees,  and  the  birds  sing  and 
the  motors  hum,  so  that  the  whole  world  as 
seen  from  the  boulevard  of  Plutoria  Avenue  Is 
the  very  pleasantest  place  imaginable. 

Just  below  Plutoria  Avenue,  and  parallel 
with  It,  the  trees  die  out  and  the  brick  and  stone 
of  the  City  begins  in  earnest.  Even  from  the 
Avenue  you  see  the  tops  of  the  sky-scraping 
buildings  In  the  big  commercial  streets,  and  can 
hear  or  almost  hear  the  roar  of  the  elevated 
railway,  earning  dividends.     And  beyond  that 

10 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

again  the  City  sinks  lower,  and  is  choked  and 
crowded  with  the  tangled  streets  and  little 
houses  of  the  slums. 

In  fact,  if  you  were  to  mount  to  the  roof  of 
the  Mausoleum  Club  itself  on  Plutoria  Avenue 
you  could  almost  see  the  slums  from  there. 
But  why  should  you  ?  And  on  the  other  hand, 
if  you  never  went  up  on  the  roof,  but  only  dined 
inside  among  the  palm-trees,  you  would  never 
know  that  the  slums  existed — which  is  much 
better. 

There  are  broad  steps  leading  up  to  the  club, 
so  broad  and  so  agreeably  covered  with  mat- 
ting that  the  physical  exertion  of  lifting  one- 
self from  one's  motor  to  the  door  of  the  club 
is  reduced  to  the  smallest  compass.  The  richer 
members  are  not  ashamed  to  take  the  steps  one 
at  a  time,  first  one  foot  and  then  the  other; 
and  at  tight  money  periods,  when  there  is  a 
black  cloud  hanging  over  the  Stock  Exchange, 
you  may  see  each  and  every  one  of  the  mem- 
bers of  the  Mausoleum  Club  dragging  himself 
up  the  steps  after  this  fashion,  his  restless  eyes 
filled  with  the  dumb  pathos  of  a  man  wondering 
where  he  can  put  his  hand  on  half  a  million 
dollars. 

But  at  gayer  times,  when  there  are  gala  re- 
ceptions at  the  club,  its  steps  are  all  buried  un- 
der expensive  carpet,  soft  as  moss  and  covered 
over  with  a  long  pavilion  of  red  and  white 

II 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

awning  to  catch  the  snowflakes;  and  beautiful 
ladies  are  poured  into  the  club  by  the  motorful. 
Then  Indeed  it  is  turned  into  a  veritable  Arca- 
dia ;  and  for  a  beautiful  pastoral  scene,  such  as 
would  have  gladdened  the  heart  of  a  poet  who 
understood  the  cost  of  things,  commend  me  to 
the  Mausoleum  Club  on  just  such  an  evening. 
Its  broad  corridors  and  deep  recesses  are  filled 
with  shepherdesses  such  as  you  never  saw, 
dressed  In  beautiful  shimmering  gowns,  and 
wearing  feathers  in  their  hair  that  droop  off 
sideways  at  every  angle  known  to  trigonometry. 
And  there  are  shepherds  too  with  broad  white 
waistcoats  and  little  patent  leather  shoes  and 
heavy  faces  and  congested  cheeks.  And  there 
is  dancing  and  conversation  among  the  shep- 
herds and  shepherdesses,  with  such  brilliant 
flashes  of  wit  and  repartee  about  the  rise  In 
Wabash  and  the  fall  In  Cement  that  the  soul  of 
Louis  Quatorze  would  leap  to  hear  it.  And 
later  there  is  supper  at  little  tables,  when  the 
shepherds  and  shepherdesses  consume  preferred 
stocks  and  gold-Interest  bonds  In  the  shape  of 
chilled  champagne  and  iced  asparagus,  and 
great  platefuls  of  dividends  and  special  quar- 
terly bonuses  are  carried  to  and  fro  In  silver 
dishes  by  Chinese  philosophers  dressed  up  to 
look  like  waiters. 

But  on  ordinary  days  there  are  no  ladles  in 
the  club,  but  only  the  shepherds.    You  may  see 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

them  sitting  about  in  little  groups  of  two  and 
three  under  the  palm-trees  drinking  whiskey 
and  soda;  though  of  course  the  more  temper- 
ate among  them  drink  nothing  but  whiskey  and 
Lithia  water,  and  those  who  have  important 
business  to  do  in  the  afternoon  limit  themselves 
to  whiskey  and  Radnor,  or  whiskey  and  Magi 
water.  There  are  as  many  kinds  of  bubbling, 
gurgling,  mineral  waters  in  the  caverns  of  the 
Mausoleum  Club  as  ever  sparkled  from  the 
rocks  of  Homeric  Greece.  And  when  you  have 
once  grown  used  to  them,  it  is  as  impossible  to 
go  back  to  plain  water  as  it  is  to  live  again  in 
the  forgotten  house  in  a  side  street  that  you  in- 
habited long  before  you  became  a  member. 

Thus  the  members  sit  and  talk  in  undertones 
that  float  to  the  ear  through  the  haze  of  Ha- 
vana smoke.  You  may  hear  the  older  men  ex- 
plaining that  the  country  is  going  to  absolute 
ruin,  and  the  younger  ones  explaining  that  the 
country  is  forging  ahead  as  it  never  did  before; 
but  chiefly  they  love  to  talk  of  great  national 
questions,  such  as  the  protective  tariff  and  the 
need  of  raising  it,  the  sad  decline  of  the  moral- 
ity of  the  working  man,  the  spread  of  syndical- 
ism and  the  lack  of  Christianity  in  the  labour 
class,  and  the  awful  growth  of  selfishness  among 
the  mass  of  the  people. 

So  they  talk,  except  for  two  or  three  that 
drop  off  to  directors'  meetings,  till  the  after- 

13 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

noon  fades  and  darkens  into  evening,  and  the 
noiseless  Chinese  philosophers  turn  on  soft 
lights  here  and  there  among  the  palm-trees. 
Presently  they  dine  at  white  tables  glittering 
with  cut  glass  and  green  and  yellow  Rhine 
wines;  and  after  dinner  they  sit  again  among 
the  palm-trees,  half  hidden  in  the  blue  smoke, 
still  talking  of  the  tariff  and  the  labour  class 
and  trying  to  wash  away  the  memory  and  the 
sadness  of  it  in  floods  of  mineral  waters.  So 
the  evening  passes  into  night,  and  one  by  one 
the  great  motors  come  throbbing  to  the  door, 
and  the  Mausoleum  Club  empties  and  darkens 
till  the  last  member  is  borne  away  and  the  Ar- 
cadian day  ends  in  well-earned  repose. 

"I  want  you  to  give  me  your  opinion  very, 
very  frankly,"  said  Mr.  Lucullus  Fyshe  on  one 
side  of  the  luncheon  table  to  the  Rev.  Fareforth 
Furlong  on  the  other. 

"By  all  means,"  said  Mr.  Furlong. 

Mr.  Fyshe  poured  out  a  wineglassful  of  soda 
and  handed  it  to  the  rector  to  drink. 

"Now  tell  me  very  truthfully,"  he  said,  "Is 
there  too  much  carbon  In  It?" 

"By  no  means,"  said  Mr.  Furlong. 

"And — quite  frankly — not  too  much  hydro- 
gen?" 

"Oh,  decidedly  not." 

"And  you  would  not  say  that  the  percentage 
14 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

of  sodium  bicarbonate  was  too  great  for  the 
ordinary  taste?" 

"I  certainly  should  not,"  said  Mr.  Furlong, 
and  in  this  he  spoke  the  truth. 

"Very  good  then,"  said  Mr.  Fyshe,  "I  shall 
use  it  for  the  Duke  of  Dulham  this  afternoon." 

He  uttered  the  name  of  the  Duke  with  that 
quiet,  democratic  carelessness  which  meant  that 
he  didn't  care  whether  half  a  dozen  other  mem- 
bers lunching  at  the  club  could  hear  or  not. 
After  all,  what  was  a  duke  to  a  man  who  was 
president  of  the  People's  Traction  and  Subur- 
ban Co.  and  the  Republican  Soda  and  Siphon 
Co-operative,  and  chief  director  of  the  People's 
District  Loan  and  Savings?  If  a  man  with  a 
broad  basis  of  popular  support  like  that  was 
proposing  to  entertain  a  duke,  surely  there 
Gould  be  no  doubt  about  his  motives?  None 
at  all.  • 

Naturally,  too,  if  a  man  manufactures  soda 
himself,  he  gets  a  little  over-sensitive  about  the 
possibility  of  his  guests  noticing  the  existence 
of  too  much  carbon  In  it. 

In  fact,  ever  so  many  of  the  members  of  the 
Mausoleum  Club  manufacture  things,  or  cause 
them  to  be  manufactured,  or — what  is  the  same 
thing — merge  them  when  they  are  manufac- 
tured. This  gives  them  their  peculiar  chemical 
attitude  towards  their  food.  One  often  sees  a 
member  suddenly  call  the  head  waiter  at  break- 

15 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

fast  to  tell  him  that  there  is  too  much  ammonia 
in  the  bacon;  and  another  one  protest  at  the 
amount  of  glucose  in  the  olive  oil ;  and  another 
that  there  is  too  high  a  percentage  of  nitrogen 
in  the  anchovy.  A  man  of  distorted  imagina- 
tion might  think  this  tasting  of  chemicals  in  the 
food  a  sort  of  nemesis  of  fate  upon  the  mem- 
bers. But  that  would  be  very  foolish,  for  in 
every  case  the  head  waiter,  who  is  the  chief  of 
the  Chinese  philosophers  mentioned  above,  says 
that  he'll  see  to  it  immediately  and  have  the 
percentage  removed.  And  as  for  the  members 
themselves,  they  are  about  as  much  ashamed  of 
manufacturing  and  merging  things  as  the  Mar- 
quis of  Salisbury  is  ashamed  of  the  founders  of 
the  Cecil  family. 

What  more  natural  therefore  than  that  Mr. 
LucuUus  Fyshe,  before  serving  the  soda  to  the 
Duke,  should  try  it  on  somebody  else?  And 
what  better  person  could  be  found  for  this 
than  Mr.  Furlong,  the  saintly  young  rector  of 
St.  Asaph's,  who  had  enjoyed  the  kind  of  ex- 
pensive college  education  calculated  to  develop 
all  the  faculties.  Moreover,  a  rector  of  the 
Anglican  Church  who  has  been  in  the  foreign 
mission  field  is  the  kind  of  person  from  whom 
one  can  find  out,  more  or  less  incidentally,  how 
one  should  address  and  converse  with  a  duke, 
and  whether  you  call  him,  "Your  Grace,"  or 
"His  Grace,"  or  just  "Grace,"  or  "Duke,"  or 

i6 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

what.  All  of  which  things  would  seem  to  a 
director  of  the  People's  Bank  and  the  presi- 
dent of  the  Republican  Soda  Co.  so  trivial  in 
importance  that  he  would  scorn  to  ask  about 
them. 

So  that  was  why  Mr.  Fyshe  had  asked  Mr. 
Furlong  to  lunch  with  him,  and  to  dine  with  him 
later  on  in  the  same  day  at  the  Mausoleum 
Club  to  meet  the  Duke  of  Dulham.  And  Mr. 
Furlong,  realising  that  a  clergyman  must  be  all 
things  to  all  men  and  not  avoid  a  man  merely 
because  he  is  a  duke  had  accepted  the  invita- 
tion to  lunch,  and  had  promised  to  come  to 
dinner,  even  though  it  meant  postponing  the 
Willing  Workers'  Tango  Class  of  St.  Asaph's 
until  the  following  Friday. 

Thus  it  had  come  about  that  Mr.  Fyshe  was 
seated  at  lunch,  consuming  a  cutlet  and  a  pint 
of  Moselle  in  the  plain,  downright  fashion  of  a 
man  so  democratic  that  he  is  practically  a  revo- 
lutionary socialist,  and  doesn't  mind  saying  so; 
and  the  young  rector  of  St.  Asaph's  was  sitting 
opposite  to  him  in  a  religious  ecstasy  over  a 
salmi  of  duck. 

"The  Duke  arrived  this  morning,  did  he 
not?"  said  Mr.  Furlong. 

"From  New  York,"  said  Mr.  Fyshe;  "he  is 
staying  at  the  Grand  Palaver.  I  sent  a  telegram 
through  one  of  our  New  York  directors  of  the 

17 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

Traction,  and  his  Grace  has  very  kindly  prom- 
ised to  come  over  here  to  dine." 

"Is  he  here  for  pleasure?"  asked  the  rector. 

"I  understand  he  is — "  Mr.  Fyshe  was  going 
to  say  "about  to  invest  a  large  part  of  his  for- 
tune in  American  securities,"  but  he  thought  bet- 
ter of  it.  Even  with  the  clergy  it  is  well  to  be 
careful.  So  he  substituted  "is.  very  much  inter- 
ested in  studying  American  conditions." 

"Does  he  stay  long?"  asked  Mr.  Furlong. 

Had  Mr.  Lucullus  Fyshe  replied  quite  truth- 
fully, he  would  have  said,  "Not  if  I  can  get  his 
money  out  of  him  quickly,"  but  he  merely  an- 
swered, "That  I  don't  know." 

"He  will  find  much  to  interest  him,"  went  on 
the  rector  in  a  musing  tone.  "The  position  of 
the  Anglican  Church  in  America  should  afford 
him  an  object  of  much  consideration.  I  under- 
stand," he  added,  feeling  his  way,  "that  his 
Grace  is  a  man  of  deep  piety." 

"Very  deep,"  said  Mr.  Fyshe. 

"And  of  great  philanthropy?" 

"Very  great." 

"And  I  presume,"  said  the  rector,  taking  a 
devout  sip  of  the  unfinished  soda,  "that  he  is  a 
man  of  immense  wealth?" 

"I  suppose  so,"  answered  Mr.  Fyshe  quite 
carelessly;  "all  these  fellows  are." — Mr.  Fyshe 
generally  referred  to  the  British  aristocracy  as 
"these    fellows" — "Land,    you    know,    feudal 

i8 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

estates ;  sheer  robbery,  I  call  it.  How  the  work- 
ing class,  the  proletariat,  stand  for  such  tyranny 
is  more  than  I  can  see.  Mark  my  words,  Fur- 
long, some  day  they'll  rise  and  the  whole  thing 
will  come  to  a  sudden  end." 

Mr.  Fyshe  was  here  launched  upon  his  fa- 
vourite topic;  but  he  interrupted  himself,  just 
for  a  moment,  to  speak  to  the  waiter. 

"What  the  devil  do  you  mean,"  he  said,  "by 
serving  asparagus  half  cold?" 

"Very  sorry,  sir,"  said  the  waiter,  "shall  I 
take  it  out?" 

"Take  it  out?  Of  course  take  it  out,  and  see 
that  you  don't  serve  me  stuff  of  that  sort  again, 
or  I'll  report  you." 

"Very  sorry,  sir,"  said  the  waiter. 

Mr.  Fyshe  looked  at  the  vanishing  waiter 
with  contempt  upon  his  features.  "These  pam- 
pered fellows  are  getting  unbearable,"  he  said. 
"By  Gad,  if  I  had  my  way  I'd  fire  the  whole  lot 
of  them:  lock  'em  out,  put  'em  on  the  street. 
That  would  teach  'em.  Yes,  Furlong,  you'll 
live  to  see  it  that  the  whole  working  class  will 
one  day  rise  against  the  tyranny  of  the  upper 
classes,  and  society  will  be  overwhelmed." 

But  if  Mr.  Fyshe  had  realised  that  at  that 
moment,  in  the  kitchen  of  the  Mausoleum  Club, 
in  those  sacred  precincts  themselves,  there  was 
a  walking  delegate  of  the  Waiters'  Interna- 
tional Union  leaning  against  a  sideboard,  with 

19 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

his  bowler  hat  over  one  corner  of  his  eye,  and 
talking  to  a  little  group  of  the  Chinese  philos- 
ophers, he  would  have  known  that  perhaps  the 
social  catastrophe  was  a  little  nearer  than  even 
he  suspected. 

"Are  you  inviting  any  one  else  to-night?" 
asked  Mr.  Furlong. 

"I  should  have  liked  to  ask  your  father," 
said  Mr.  Fyshe,  "but  unfortunately  he  is  out 
of  town." 

What  Mr.  Fyshe  really  meant  was,  "I  am 
extremely  glad  not  to  have  to  ask  your  father, 
whom  I  would  not  introduce  to  the  Duke  on 
any  account." 

Indeed,  Mr.  Furlong,  senior,  the  father  of 
the  rector  of  St.  Asaph's,  who  was  President 
of  the  New  Amalgamated  Hymnal  Corpora- 
tion, and  Director  of  the  Hosanna  Pipe  and 
Steam  Organ,  Limited,  was  entirely  the  wrong 
man  for  Mr.  Fyshe's  present  purpose.  In  fact, 
he  was  reputed  to  be  as  smart  a  man  as  ever 
sold  a  Bible.  At  this  moment  he  was  out  of 
town,  busied  in  New  York  with  the  preparation 
of  the  plates  of  his  new  Hindu  Testament 
(copyright)  ;  but  had  he  learned  that  a  duke 
with  several  millions  to  invest  was  about  to 
visit  the  city,  he  would  not  have  left  it  for  the 
whole  of  Hindustan. 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

"I  suppose  you  are  asking  Mr.  Boulder,'* 
said  the  rector. 

"No,"  answered  Mr.  Fyshe  very  decidedly, 
dismissing  the  name  absolutely. 

Indeed,  there  was  even  better  reason  not  to 
introduce  Mr.  Boulder  to  the  Duke.  Mr.  Fyshe 
had  made  that  sort  of  mistake  once,  and  never 
intended  to  make  it  again.  It  was  only  a  year 
ago,  on  the  occasion  of  the  visit  of  young  Vis- 
count FitzThistle  to  the  Mausoleum  Club,  that 
Mr.  Fyshe  had  introduced  Mr.  Boulder  to  the 
Viscount  and  had  suffered  grievously  thereby. 
For  Mr.  Boulder  had  no  sooner  met  the  Vis- 
count than  he  invited  him  up  to  his  hunting- 
lodge  in  Wisconsin,  and  that  was  the  last  thing 
known  of  the  investment  of  the  FitzThistle 
fortune. 

This  Mr.  Boulder  of  whom  Mr.  Fyshe  spoke 
might  indeed  have  been  seen  at  that  moment  at 
a  further  table  of  the  lunch  room  eating  a  soli- 
tary meal,  an  oldish  man  with  a  great  frame 
suggesting  broken  strength,  with  a  white  beard 
and  with  falling  under-eyelids  that  made  him 
look  as  if  he  were  just  about  to  cry.  His  eyes 
were  blue  and  far  away,  and  his  still,  mourn- 
ful face  and  his  great  bent  shoulders  seemed 
to  suggest  all  the  power  and  mystery  of  high 
finance. 

Gloom  indeed  hung  over  him.  For,  when 
one  heard  him  talk  of  listed  stocks  and  cumu- 

21 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

lative  dividends,  there  was  as  deep  a  tone  in  his 
quiet  voice  as  if  he  spoke  of  eternal  punishment 
and  the  wages  of  sin. 

Under  his  great  hands  a  chattering  viscount, 
or  a  sturdy  duke,  or  a  popinjay  Italian  marquis 
was  as  nothing. 

Mr.  Boulder's  methods  with  titled  visitors 
investing  money  in  America  were  deep.  He 
never  spoke  to  them  of  money,  not  a  word.  He 
merely  talked  of  the  great  American  forest — 
he  had  been  born  sixty-five  years  back,  in  a  lum- 
ber state — and,  when  he  spoke  of  primeval 
trees  and  the  howl  of  the  wolf  at  night  among 
the  pines,  there  was  the  stamp  of  reality  about 
it  that  held  the  visitor  spellbound;  and  when 
he  fell  to  talking  of  his  hunting-lodge  far  away 
in  the  Wisconsin  timber,  duke,  earl,  or  baron 
that  had  ever  handled  a  double-barrelled  ex- 
press rifle  listened  and  was  lost. 

"I  have  a  Httle  place,"  Mr.  Boulder  would 
say  in  his  deep  tones  that  seemed  almost  like  a 
sob,  "a  sort  of  shooting  box,  I  think  you'd  call 
it,  up  in  Wisconsin;  just  a  plain  place" — he 
would  add,  almost  crying — "made  of  logs." 

"Oh,  really,"  the  visitor  would  interject, 
"made  of  logs.    By  Jove,  how  interesting!" 

All  titled  people  are  fascinated  at  once  with 
logs,  and  Mr.  Boulder  knew  it — at  least  sub- 
consciously. 

"Yes,  logs,"  he  would  continue,  still  in  deep 

22 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

sorrow;  "just  the  plain  cedar,  not  squared,  you 
know,  the  old  original  timber;  I  had  them  cut 
right  out  of  the  forest." 

By  this  time  the  visitor's  excitement  was  ob- 
vious. "And  is  there  game  there?"  he  would 
ask. 

"We  have  the  timber  wolf,"  said  Mr.  Boul- 
der, his  voice  half  choking  at  the  sadness  of  the 
thing,  "and  of  course  the  jack  wolf  and  the 
lynx." 

"And  are  they  ferocious?" 

"Oh,  extremely  so — quite  uncontrollable." 

On  which  the  titled  visitor  was  all  excitement 
to  start  for  Wisconsin  at  once,  even  before  Mr. 
Boulder's  invitation  was  put  in  words. 

And  when  he  returned  a  week  later,  all 
tanned  and  wearing  bush-whackers'  boots,  and 
covered  with  wolf  bites,  his  whole  available 
fortune  was  so  completely  invested  in  Mr.  Boul- 
der's securities  that  you  couldn't  have  shaken 
twenty-five  cents  out  of  him  upside  down. 

Yet  the  whole  thing  had  been  done  merely 
incidentally — round  a  big  fire  under  the  Wis- 
consin timber,  with  a  dead  wolf  or  two  lying  in 
the  snow. 

So  no  wonder  that  Mr.  Fyshe  did  not  pro- 
pose to  invite  Mr.  Boulder  to  his  little  dinner. 
No,  indeed.  In  fact,  his  one  aim  was  to  keep 
Mr.  Boulder  and  his  log  house  hidden  from 
the  Duke. 

2$ 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

And  equally  no  wonder  that  as  soon  as  Mr. 
Boulder  read  of  the  Duke's  arrival  in  New 
York,  and  saw  by  the  Commercial  Echo  and 
Financial  Undertone  that  he  might  come  to  the 
City  looking  for  investments,  he  telephoned  at 
once  to  his  little  place  in  Wisconsin — which 
had,  of  course,  a  primeval  telephone  wire  run- 
ning to  it — and  told  his  steward  to  have  the 
place  well  aired  and  good  fires  lighted;  and  he 
especially  enjoined  him  to  see  if  any  of  the 
shanty  men  thereabouts  could  catch  a  wolf  or 
two,  as  he  might  need  them. 

"Is  no  one  else  coming  then?"  asked  the 
rector. 

"Oh  yes.  President  Boomer  of  the  Univer- 
sity. We  shall  be  a  party  of  four.  I  thought 
the  Duke  might  be  interested  in  meeting 
Boomer.  He  may  care  to  hear  something  of 
the  archaeological  remains  of  the  continent." 

If  the  Duke  did  so  care,  he  certainly  had  a 
splendid  chance  in  meeting  the  gigantic  Dr. 
Boomer,  the  president  of  Plutoria  University. 

If  he  wanted  to  know  anything  of  the  exact 
distinction  between  the  Mexican  Pueblo  and  the 
Navajo  tribal  house,  he  had  his  opportunity 
right  now.  If  he  was  eager  to  hear  a  short 
talk — say  half  an  hour — on  the  relative  an- 
tiquity of  the  Neanderthal  skull  and  the  gravel 
deposits  of  the  Missouri,  his  chance  had  come. 

24 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

He  could  learn  as  much  about  the  stone  age  and 
the  bronze  age,  in  America,  from  President 
Boomer,  as  he  could  about  the  gold  age  and 
the  age  of  paper  securities  from  Mr.  Fyshe 
and  Mr.  Boulder. 

So  what  better  man  to  meet  a  duke  than  an 
archaeological  president? 

And  if  the  Duke  should  feel  inclined,  as  a 
result  of  his  American  visit  (for  Dr.  Boomer, 
who  knew  everything,  understood  what  the 
Duke  had  come  for)  inclined,  let  us  say,  to 
endow  a  chair  in  Primitive  Anthropology,  or 
do  any  useful  little  thing  of  the  sort,  that  was 
only  fair  business  all  round;  or  if  he  even  was 
willing  to  give  a  moderate  sum  towards  the 
general  fund  of  Plutoria  University — enough, 
let  us  say,  to  enable  the  president  to  dismiss 
an  old  professor  and  hire  a  new  one — that 
surely  was  reasonable  enough. 

The  president,  therefore,  had  said  yes  to 
Mr.  Fyshe's  invitation  with  alacrity,  and  had 
taken  a  look  through  the  list  of  his  more  in- 
competent professors  to  refresh  his  memory. 

The. Duke  of  Dulham  had  landed  in  New 
York  five  days  before  and  had  looked  round 
eagerly  for  a  field  of  turnips,  but  hadn't  seen 
any.  He  had  been  driven  up  Fifth  Avenue  and 
had  kept  his  eyes  open  for  potatoes,  but  there 
were  none.    Nor  had  he  seen  any  shorthorns  in 

25 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

Central  Park,  nor  any  Southdowns  on  Broad- 
way. For  the  Duke,  of  course,  like  all  dukes, 
was  agricultural  from  his  Norfolk  jacket  to 
his  hobnailed  boots. 

At  his  restaurant  he  had  cut  a  potato  in  two 
and  sent  half  of  it  to  the  head  waiter  to  know 
if  it  was  Bermudian.  It  had  all  the  look  of  an 
early  Bermudian,  but  the  Duke  feared  from  the 
shading  of  it  that  it  might  be  only  a  late  Trini- 
dad. And  the  head  waiter  sent  it  to  the  chef, 
mistaking  it  for  a  complaint,  and  the  chef  sent 
it  back  to  the  Duke  with  a  message  that  it  was 
not  a  Bermudian  but  a  Prince  Edward  Island. 
And  the  Duke  sent  his  compliments  to  the  chef, 
and  the  chef  sent  his  compliments  to  the  Duke. 
And  the  Duke  was  so  pleased  at  learning  this 
that  he  had  a  similar  potato  wrapped  up  for 
him  to  take  away,  and  tipped  the  head  waiter 
twenty-five  cents,  feeling  that  in  an  extravagant 
country  the  only  thing  to  do  is  to  go  the  people 
one  better.  So  the  Duke  carried  the  potato 
round  for  five  days  in  New  York  and  showed 
it  to  everybody.  But  beyond  this  he  got  no 
sign  of  agriculture  out  of  the  place  at  all.  No 
one  who  entertained  him  seemed  to  know  what 
the  beef  that  they  gave  him  had  been  fed  on; 
no  one,  even  in  what  seemed  the  best  society, 
could  talk  rationally  about  preparing  a  hog 
for  the  breakfast  table.  People  seemed  to  eat 
cauliflower  without  distinguishing  the  Denmark 

26 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

variety  from  the  Oldenburg,  and  few,  If  any, 
knew  Silesian  bacon  even  when  they  tasted  it. 
And  when  they  took  the  Duke  out  twenty-five 
miles  into  what  was  called  the  country,  there 
were  still  no  turnips,  but  only  real  estate,  and 
railway  embankments,  and  advertising  signs; 
so  that  altogether  the  obvious  and  visible  de- 
cline of  American  agriculture  in  what  should 
have  been  its  leading  centre  saddened  the 
Duke's  heart.  Thus  the  Duke  passed  four 
gloomy  days.  Agricuture  vexed  him,  and  still 
more,  of  course,  the  money  concerns  which  had 
brought  him  to  America. 

Money  is  a  troublesome  thing.  But  it  has 
got  to  be  thought  about  even  by  those  who  were 
not  brought  up  to  it.  If,  on  account  of  money 
matters,  one  has  been  driven  to  come  over  to 
America  in  the  hope  of  borrowing  money,  the 
awkwardness  of  how  to  go  about  it  naturally 
makes  one  gloomy  and  preoccupied.  Had  there 
been  broad  fields  of  turnips  to  walk  in  and  Hol- 
stein  cattle  to  punch  in  the  ribs,  one  might  have 
managed  to  borrow  it  in  the  course  of  gentle- 
manly intercourse,  as  from  one  cattle-man  to 
another.  But  in  New  York,  amid  piles  of 
masonry  and  roaring  street-traffic  and  glitter- 
ing lunches  and  palatial  residences,  one  simply 
couldn't  do  it. 

Herein  lay  the  truth  about  the  Duke  of  Dul- 
ham's  visit  and  the  error  of  Mr.  LucuUus  Fyshe. 

27 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

Mr.  Fyshe  was  thinking  that  the  Duke  had 
come  to  lend  money.  In  reality  he  had  come 
to  borrow  it.  In  fact,  the  Duke  was  reckoning 
that  by  putting  a  second  mortgage  on  Dulham 
Towers  for  twenty  thousand  sterling,  and  by 
selling  his  Scotch  shooting  and  leasing  his  Irish 
grazing  and  sub-letting  his  Welsh  coal  rent  he 
could  raise  altogether  a  hundred  thousand 
pounds.  This,  for  a  duke,  is  an  enormous  sum. 
If  he  once  had  it  he  would  be  able  to  pay  off 
the  first  mortgage  on  Dulham  Towers,  buy  in 
the  rights  of  the  present  tenant  of  the  Scotch 
shooting  and  the  claim  of  the  present  mort- 
gagee of  the  Irish  grazing,  and  in  fact  be  just 
where  he  started.  This  is  ducal  finance,  which 
moves  always  in  a  circle. 

In  other  words  the  Duke  was  really  a  poor 
man — not  poor  in  the  American  sense,  where 
poverty  comes  as  a  sudden  blighting  stringency, 
taking  the  form  of  an  inability  to  get  hold  of  a 
quarter  of  a  million  dollars,  no  matter  how 
badly  one  needs  it,  and  where  it  passes  like  a 
storm-cloud  and  is  gone,  but  poor  in  that  perma- 
nent and  distressing  sense  known  only  to  the 
British  aristocracy.  The  Duke's  case,  of  course, 
was  notorious,  and  Mr.  Fyshe  ought  to  have 
known  of  it.  The  Duke  was  so  poor  that  the 
Duchess  was  compelled  to  spend  three  or  four 
months  every  year  at  a  fashionable  hotel  on 
the  Riviera  simply  to  save  money,  and  his  eldest 

28 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

son,  the  young  Marquis  of  Beldoodlc,  had  to 
put  in  most  of  his  time  shooting  big  game  in 
Uganda,  with  only  twenty  or  twenty-five  beat- 
ers, and  with  so  few  carriers  and  couriers  and 
such  a  dearth  of  elephant  men  and  hyena  boys 
that  the  thing  was  a  perfect  scandal.  The  Duke 
indeed  was  so  poor  that  a  younger  son,  simply 
to  add  his  efforts  to  those  of  the  rest,  was  com- 
pelled to  pass  his  days  in  mountain  climbing  in 
the  Himalayas,  and  the  Duke's  daughter  was 
obliged  to  pay  long  visits  to  minor  German 
princesses,  putting  up  with  all  sorts  of  hardship. 
And  while  the  ducal  family  wandered  about  in 
this  way — climbing  mountains,  and  shooting 
hyenas,  and  saving  money,  the  Duke's  place  or 
seat,  Dulham  Towers,  was  practically  shut  up, 
with  no  one  in  it  but  servants  and  housekeepers 
and  gamekeepers  and  tourists;  and  the  picture 
galleries,  except  for  artists  and  visitors  and  vil- 
lagers, were  closed;  and  the  town  house,  except 
for  the  presence  of  servants  and  tradesmen  and 
secretaries,  was  absolutely  shut.  But  the  Duke 
knew  that  rigid  parsimony  of  this  sort,  if  kept 
up  for  a  generation  or  two,  will  work  wonders, 
and  this  sustained  him;  and  the  Duchess  knew 
it,  and  it  sustained  her;  in  fact,  all  the  ducal 
family,  knowing  that  it  was  only  a  matter  of  a 
generation  or  two,  took  their  misfortune  very 
cheerfully. 

The  only  thing  that  bothered  the  Duke  was 
29 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

borrowing  money.  This  was  necessary  from 
time  to  time  when  loans  or  mortgages  fell  in, 
but  he  hated  it.  It  was  beneath  him.  His  an- 
cestors had  often  taken  money,  but  had  never 
borrowed  it,  and  the  Duke  chafed  under  the 
necessity.  There  was  something  about  the 
process  that  went  against  the  grain.  To  sit 
down  in  pleasant  converse  with  a  man,  perhaps 
almost  a  gentleman,  and  then  lead  up  to  the 
subject  and  take  his  money  from  him,  seemed  to 
the  Duke's  mind  essentially  low.  He  could 
have  understood  knocking  a  man  over  the  head 
with  a  fire  shovel  and  taking  his  money,  but 
not  borrowing  it. 

So  the  Duke  had  come  to  America,  where 
borrowing  is  notoriously  easy.  Any  member  of 
the  Mausoleum  Club,  for  instance,  would  bor- 
row fifty  cents  to  buy  a  cigar,  or  fifty  thousand 
dollars  to  buy  a  house,  or  five  millions  to  buy  a 
railroad  with  complete  indifference,  and  pay  it 
back,  too,  if  he  could,  and  think  nothing  of  it. 
In  fact,  ever  so  many  of  the  Duke's  friends 
were  known  to  have  borrowed  money  in  Amer- 
ica with  magical  ease,  pledging  for  it  their  seats 
or  their  pictures,  or  one  of  their  daughters — 
anything. 

So  the  Duke  knew  it  must  be  easy.  And  yet, 
incredible  as  it  may  seem,  he  had  spent  four 
days  in  New  York,  entertained  everywhere,  and 
made  much  of,  and  hadn't  borrowed  a  cent.  He 

30 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

had  been  asked  to  lunch  in  a  Riverside  palace, 
and,  fool  that  he  was,  had  come  away  without 
so  much  as  a  dollar  to  show  for  it.  He  had 
been  asked  to  a  country  house  on  the  Hudson, 
and,  like  an  idiot — he  admitted  it  himself — 
hadn't  asked  his  host  for  as  much  as  his  train 
fare.  He  had  been  driven  twice  round  Central 
Park  in  a  motor  and  had  been  taken  tamely 
back  to  his  hotel  not  a  dollar  the  richer.  The 
thing  was  childish,  and  he  knew  it.  But  to 
save  his  life  the  Duke  didn't  know  how  to  be- 
gin. None  of  the  things  that  he  was  able  to 
talk  about  seemed  to  have  the  remotest  connec- 
tion with  the  subject  of  money.  The  Duke  was 
able  to  converse  reasonably  well  over  such  top- 
ics as  the  approaching  downfall  of  England 
(they  had  talked  of  it  at  Dulham  Towers  for 
sixty  years),  or  over  the  duty  of  England  to- 
ward China,  or  the  duty  of  England  to  Persia, 
or  its  duty  to  aid  the  Young  Turk  Movement, 
and  its  duty  to  check  the  Old  Servia  agitation. 
The  Duke  became  so  interested  in  these  topics 
and  in  explaining  that  while  he  had  never  been 
a  Litde  Englandcr  he  had  always  been  a  Big 
Turk,  and  that  he  stood  for  a  Small  Bulgaria 
and  a  Restricted  Austria,  that  he  got  further 
and  further  away  from  the  topic  of  money, 
which  was  what  he  really  wanted  to  come  to; 
and  the  Duke  rose  from  his  conversations  with 
a  look  of  such  obvious  distress  on  his  face  that 

31 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

everybody  realised  that  his  anxiety  about  Eng- 
land was  killing  him. 

And  then  suddenly  light  had  come.  It  was 
on  his  fourth  day  in  New  York  that  he  unex- 
pectedly ran  into  the  Viscount  Belstairs  (they 
had  been  together  as  young  men  in  Nigeria, 
and  as  middle-aged  men  in  St.  Petersburg), 
and  Belstairs,  who  was  in  abundant  spirits  and 
who  was  returning  to  England  on  the  Glori- 
tania  at  noon  the  next  day,  explained  to  the 
Duke  that  he  had  just  borrowed  fifty  thousand 
pounds,  on  security  that  wouldn't  be  worth  a 
halfpenny  in  England. 

And  the  Duke  said  with  a  sigh,  "How  the 
deuce  do  you  do  it,  Belstairs?" 

"Do  what?" 

"Borrow  it,"  said  the  Duke.  "How  do  you 
manage  to  get  people  to  talk  about  it?  Here  I 
am  wanting  to  borrow  a  hundred  thousand,  and 
I'm  hanged  if  I  can  even  find  an  opening." 

At  which  the  Viscount  had  said,  "Pooh, 
pooh!  you  don't  need  any  opening.  Just  bor- 
row it  straight  out — ask  for  it  across  a  dinner 
table,  just  as  you'd  ask  for  a  match ;  they  think 
nothing  of  it  here." 

"Across  the  dinner  table?"  repeated  the 
Duke,  who  was  a  literal  man. 

"Certainly,"  said  the  Viscount.  "Not  too 
soon,  you  know — say  after  a  second  glass  of 
wine.     I  assure  you  it's  absolutely  nothing." 

32 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rick 

And  it  was  just  at  that  moment  that  a  tele- 
gram was  handed  to  the  Duke  from  Mr,  Lucul- 
lus  Fyshe,  praying  him,  as  he  was  reported  to 
be  visiting  the  next  day  the  City  where  the 
Mausoleum  Club  stands,  to  make  acquaintance 
with  him  by  dining  at  that  institution. 

And  the  Duke,  being  as  I  say  a  literal  man, 
decided  that  just  as  soon  as  Mr.  Fyshe  should 
give  him  a  second  glass  of  wine,  that  second 
glass  should  cost  Mr.  Fyshe  a  hundred  thousand 
pounds  sterling. 

And  oddly  enough,  at  about  the  same  mo- 
ment, Mr.  Fyshe  was  calculating  that  provided 
he  could  make  the  Duke  drink  a  second  glass  of 
the  Mausoleum  champagne,  that  glass  would 
cost  the  Duke  about  five  million  dollar*. 

So  the  very  morning  after  that  the  Duke  had 
arrived  on  the  New  York  express  in  the  City; 
and  being  an  ordinary,  democratic,  commercial 
sort  of  place,  absorbed  in  its  own  affairs,  it 
made  no  fuss  over  him  whatever.  The  morn- 
ing edition  of  the  Plutopian  Citizen  simply  said, 
"We  understand  that  the  Duke  of  Dulham  ar- 
rives at  the  Grand  Palaver  this  morning,"  after 
which  it  traced  the  Duke's  pedigree  back  to 
Jock  of  Ealing  in  the  twelfth  century  and  let 
the  matter  go  at  that;  and  the  noon  edition  of 
the  People's  Advocate  merely  wrote,  "We  learn 
that  Duke  Dulham  is  in  town.    He  Is  a  relation 

33 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

of  Jack  Ealing."  But  the  Commercial  Echo 
and  Financial  Undertone,  appearing  at  four 
o'clock,  printed  in  its  stock  market  columns  the 
announcement :  "We  understand  that  the  Duke 
of  Dulham,  who  arrives  in  town  to-day,  is  pro- 
posing to  invest  a  large  sum  of  money  in  Ameri- 
can Industrials." 

And  of  course  that  announcement  reached 
every  member  of  the  Mausoleum  Club  within 
twenty  minutes. 

The  Duke  of  Dulham  entered  the  Mauso- 
leum Club  that  evening  at  exactly  seven  of  the 
clock.  He  was  a  short,  thick  man  with  a  shaven 
face,  red  as  a  brick,  and  grizzled  hair,  and 
from  the  look  of  him  he  could  have  got  a  job 
at  sight  in  any  lumber  camp  in  Wisconsin.  He 
wore  a  dinner  jacket,  just  like  an  ordinary  per- 
son, but  even  without  his  Norfolk  coat  and  his 
hobnailed  boots  there  was  something  in  the  way 
in  which  he  walked  up  the  long  main  hall  of  the 
Mausoleum  Club  that  every  imported  waiter 
in  the  place  recognised  in  an  instant. 

The  Duke  cast  his  eye  about  the  club  and 
approved  of  it.  It  seemed  to  him  a  modest, 
quiet  place,  very  different  from  the  staring  os- 
tentation that  one  sees  too  often  in  a  German 
hof  or  an  Italian  palazzo.     He  liked  it. 

Mr.  Fyshe  and  Mr.  Furlong  were  standing 
in  a  deep  alcove  or  bay  where  there  was  a  fire 

34 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

and  india-rubber  trees  and  pictures  with  shaded 
lights  and  a  whiskey-and-soda  table.  There 
the  Duke  joined  them.  Mr.  Fyshe  he  had  met 
already  that  afternoon  at  the  Palaver,  and  he 
called  him  "Fyshe"  as  if  he  had  known  him 
forever;  and  indeed,  after  a  few  minutes  he 
called  the  rector  of  St.  Asaph's  simply  "Fur- 
long," for  he  had  been  familiar  with  the  Angli- 
can clergy  in  so  many  parts  of  the  world  that 
he  knew  that  to  attribute  any  peculiar  godliness 
to  them,  socially,  was  the  worst  possible  taste. 

"By  Jove,"  said  the  Duke,  turning  to  tap  the 
leaf  of  a  rubber-tree  with  his  finger,  "that  fel- 
low's a  Nigerian,  isn't  he?" 

"I  hardly  know,"  said  Mr.  Fyshe,  "I  imagine 
so";  and  he  added,  "You've  been  in  Nigeria, 
Duke?" 

"Oh,  some  years  ago,"  said  the  Duke,  "after 
big  game,  you  know — fine  place  for  it." 

"Did  you  get  any?"  asked  Mr.  Fyshe. 

"Not  much,"  said  the  Duke;  "a  hippo  or 
two." 

"Ah,"  said  Mr.  Fyshe. 

"And,  of  course,  now  and  then  a  giro,"  the 
Duke  went  on,  and  added,  "My  sister  was  luck- 
ier, though ;  she  potted  a  rhino  one  day,  straight 
out  of  a  doolie;  I  call  that  rather  good." 

Mr.  Fyshe  called  it  that  too. 

"Ah,  now  here's  a  good  thing,"  the  Duke 
went  on,  looking  at  a  picture.    He  carried  in  his 

35 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

waist-coat  pocket  an  eyeglass  that  he  used  for 
pictures  and  for  Tamworth  hogs,  and  he  put  it 
to  his  eye  with  one  hand,  keeping  the  other  in 
the  left  pocket  of  his  jacket;  "and  this — this  is 
a  very  good  thing." 

"I  believe  so,"  said  Mr.  Fyshe, 

"You  really  have  some  awfully  good  things 
here,"  continued  the  Duke.  He  had  seen  far 
too  many  pictures  in  too  many  places  ever  to 
speak  of  "values"  or  "compositions"  or  any- 
thing of  that  sort.  The  Duke  merely  looked  at 
a  picture  and  said,  "Now  here's  a  good  thing," 
or  "Ah  I  here  now  is  a  very  good  thing,"  or, 
"I  say,  here's  a  really  good  thing." 

No  one  could  get  past  this  sort  of  criticism. 
The  Duke  had  long  since  found  it  bullet-proof. 

"They  showed  me  some  rather  good  things 
in  New  York,"  he  went  on,  "but  really  the 
things  you  have  here  seem  to  be  awfully  good 
things." 

Indeed,  the  Duke  was  truly  pleased  with  the 
pictures,  for  something  in  their  composition, 
or  else  in  the  soft,  expensive  light  that  shone  on 
them,  enabled  him  to  see  in  the  distant  back- 
ground of  each  a  hundred  thousand  sterling 
And  that  is  a  very  beautiful  picture  indeed. 

"When  you  come  to  our  side  of  the  water, 
Fyshe,"  said  the  Duke,  "I  must  show  you  my 
Botticelli." 

Had  Mr.  Fyshe,  who  knew  nothing  of  art, 
36 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

expressed  his  real  thought,  he  would  have  said, 
"Show  me  your  which  ?"  But  he  only  answered, 
"I  shall  be  delighted  to  see  it." 

In  any  case  there  was  no  time  to  say  more, 
for  at  this  moment  the  portly  figure  and  the 
great  face  of  Dr.  Boomer,  president  of  Plutoria 
University,  loomed  upon  them.  And  with  him 
came  a  great  burst  of  conversation  that  blew 
all  previous  topics  into  fragments.  He  was  in- 
troduced to  the  Duke,  and  shook  hands  with 
Mr.  Furlong,  and  talked  to  both  of  them,  and 
named  the  kind  of  cocktail  that  he  wanted,  all 
in  one  breath,  and  in  the  very  next  he  was  ask- 
ing the  Duke  about  the  Babylonian  hieroglyphic 
bricks  that  his  grandfather,  the  thirteenth 
Duke,  had  brought  home  from  the  Euphrates, 
and  which  every  archaeologist  knew  were  pre- 
served in  the  Duke's  library  at  Dulham  Towers. 
And  though  the  Duke  hadn't  known  about  the 
bricks  himself,  he  assured  Dr.  Boomer  that  his 
grandfather  had  collected  some  really  good 
things,  quite  remarkable. 

And  the  Duke,  having  met  a  man  who  kne\\ 
about  his  grandfather,  felt  in  his  own  element. 
In  fact,  he  was  so  delighted  with  Dr.  Boomer 
and  the  Nigerian  rubber-tree  and  the  shaded 
pictures  and  the  charm  of  the  whole  place  and 
the  certainty  that  half  a  million  dollars  was 
easily  findable  in  it,  that  he  put  his  eye-glass 
back  in  his  pocket  and  said, 

37 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

"A  charming  club  you  have  here,  really  most 
charming." 

"Yes,"  said  Mr.  Fyshe,  in  a  casual  tone,  "a 
comfortable  place,  we  like  to  think." 

But  if  he  could  have  seen  what  was  happen- 
ing below  in  the  kitchens  of  the  Mausoleum 
Club,  Mr.  Fyshe  would  have  realised  that  just 
then  it  was  turning  into  a  most  uncomfortable 
place. 

For  the  walking  delegate  with  his  hat  on  side- 
ways, who  had  haunted  it  all  day,  was  busy  now 
among  the  assembled  Chinese  philosophers, 
writing  down  names  and  distributing  strikers' 
cards  of  the  International  Union  and  assuring 
them  that  the  "boys"  of  the  Grand  Palaver  had 
all  walked  out  at  seven,  and  that  all  the  "boys" 
of  the  Commercial  and  the  Union  and  of  every 
restaurant  in  town  were  out  an  hour  ago. 

And  the  philosophers  were  taking  their  cards 
and  hanging  up  their  waiters'  coats  and  putting 
on  shabby  jackets  and  bowler  hats,  worn  side- 
ways, and  changing  themselves  by  a  wonderful 
transformation  from  respectable  Chinese  to 
slouching  loafers  of  the  lowest  type. 

But  Mr.  Fyshe,  being  in  an  alcove  and  not  in 
the  kitchens,  saw  nothing  of  these  things.  Not 
even  when  the  head  waiter,  shaking  with  ap- 
prehension, appeared  with  cocktails  made  by 
himself,  in  glasses  that  he  himself  had  had  to 
wipe,   did  Mr.   Fyshe,   absorbed  in  the  easy 

38 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

urbanity  of  the  Duke,  notice  that  anything  was 
amiss. 

Neither  did  his  guests.  For  Dr.  Boomer, 
having  discovered  that  the  Duke  had  visited 
Nigeria,  was  asking  him  his  opinion  of  the 
famous  Bimbaweh  remains  of  the  lower  Niger. 
The  Duke  confessed  that  he  really  hadn't  no- 
ticed them,  and  the  Doctor  assured  him  that 
Strabo  had  indubitably  mentioned  them  (he 
would  show  the  Duke  the  very  passage),  and 
that  they  apparently  lay,  if  his  memory  served 
him,  about  half-way  between  Oohat  and  Ohat; 
whether  above  Oohat  and  below  Ohat  or  above 
Ohat  and  below  Oohat  he  would  not  care  to 
say  for  a  certainty;  for  that  the  Duke  must  wait 
till  the  president  had  time  to  consult  his  library. 

And  the  Duke  was  fascinated  forthwith  with 
the  president's  knowledge  of  Nigerian  geog- 
raphy, and  explained  that  he  had  once  actually 
descended  from  below  Timbuctoo  to  Oohat  in 
a  doolie  manned  only  by  four  swats. 

So  presently,  having  drunk  the  cocktails,  the 
party  moved  solemnly  in  a  body  from  the  al- 
cove towards  the  private  dining-room  upstairs, 
still  busily  talking  of  the  Bimbaweh  remains, 
and  the  swats,  and  whether  the  doolie  was,  or 
was  not,  the  original  goatskin  boat  of  the  book 
of  Genesis. 

And  when  they  entered  the  private  dining- 
room  with  its  snow-white  table  and  cut  glass 

39 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

and  flowers  (as  arranged  by  a  retreating  phil- 
osopher now  heading  towards  the  Gaiety  The- 
atre with  his  hat  over  his  eyes) ,  the  Duke  again 
exclaimed, 

"Really,  you  have  a  most  comfortable  club — 
delightful." 

So  they  sat  down  to  dinner,  over  which  Mr. 
Furlong  offered  up  a  grace  as  short  as  any  that 
are  known  even  to  the  Anglican  clergy.  And 
the  head  waiter,  now  in  deep  distress — for  he 
had  been  sending  out  telephone  messages  in 
vain  to  the  Grand  Palaver  and  the  Continental, 
like  the  captain  of  a  sinking  ship — served  oys- 
ters that  he  had  opened  himself  and  poured 
Rhine  wine  with  a  trembling  hand.  For  he 
knew  that  unless  by  magic  a  new  chef  and  a 
waiter  or  two  could  be  got  from  the  Palaver, 
all  hope  was  lost. 

But  the  guests  still  knew  nothing  of  his  fears. 
Dr.  Boomer  was  eating  his  oysters  as  a  Niger- 
ian hippo  might  eat  up  the  crew  of  a  doolie,  in 
great  mouthfuls,  and  commenting  as  he  did  so 
upon  the  luxuriousness  of  modern  life. 

And  in  the  pause  that  followed  the  oysters 
he  illustrated  for  the  Duke  with  two  pieces  of 
bread  the  essential  difference  in  structure  be- 
tween the  Mexican  pueblo  and  the  tribal  house 
of  the  Navajos,  and  lest  the  Duke  should  con- 
found either  or  both  of  them  with  the  adobe 

40 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

hut  of  the  BImbaweh  tribes  he  showed  the  dif- 
ference at  once  with  a  couple  of  olives. 

By  this  time,  of  course,  the  delay  in  the  ser- 
vice was  getting  noticeable.  Mr.  Fyshe  was 
directing  angry  glances  towards  the  door,  look- 
ing for  the  reappearance  of  the  waiter,  and 
growling  an  apology  to  his  guests.  But  the 
president  waved  the  apology  aside. 

"In  my  college  days,"  he  said,  "I  should 
have  considered  a  plate  of  oysters  an  ample 
meal.  I  should  have  asked  for  nothing  more. 
We  eat,"  he  said,  "too  much." 

This,  of  course,  started  Mr.  Fyshe  on  his 
favourite  topic.  "Luxury!"  he  exclaimed,  "I 
should  think  sol  It  is  the  curse  of  the  age. 
The  appalling  growth  of  luxury,  the  piling  up 
of  money,  the  ease  with  which  huge  fortunes 
are  made"  (Good I  thought  the  Duke,  here  we 
are  coming  to  it),  "these  are  the  things  that 
are  going  to  ruin  us.  Mark  my  words,  the 
whole  thing  is  bound  to  end  in  a  tremendous 
crash.  I  don't  mind  telling  you,  Duke — my 
friends  here,  I  am  sure,  know  it  already — that 
I  am  more  or  less  a  revolutionary  socialist.  I 
am  absolutely  convinced,  sir,  that  our  modern 
civilisation  will  end  in  a  great  social  catastrophe. 
Mark  what  I  say" — and  here  Mr.  Fyshe  be- 
came exceedingly  impressive — "a  great  social 
catastrophe.    Some  of  us  may  not  live  to  see  it, 

41 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

perhaps;  but  you,  for  instance,  Furlong,  are  a 
younger  man;  you  certainly  will." 

But  here  Mr.  Fyshe  was  understating  the 
case.  They  were  all  going  to  live  to  see  it, 
right  on  the  spot. 

For  it  was  just  at  this  moment,  when  Mr. 
Fyshe  was  talking  of  the  social  catastrophe  and 
explaining  with  flashing  eyes  that  it  was  bound 
to  come,  that  it  came;  and  when  it  came  it  lit, 
of  all  places  in  the  world,  right  there  in  the 
private  dining-room  of  the  Mausoleum  Club. 

For  the  gloomy  head  waiter  re-entered  and 
leaned  over  the  back  of  Mr.  Fyshe's  chair  and 
whispered  to  him. 

"Eh?  what?"  said  Mr.  Fyshe. 

The  head  waiter,  his  features  stricken  with 
Inward  agony,  whispered  again. 

"The  infernal,  damn  scoundrels!"  said  Mr. 
Fyshe,  starting  back  in  his  chair.  "On  strike: 
in  this  club !    It's  an  outrage !" 

"I'm  very  sorry,  sir.  I  didn't  like  to  tell  you, 
sir.  I'd  hoped  I  might  have  got  help  from  the 
outside,  but  it  seems,  sir,  the  hotels  are  all  the 
same  way." 

"Do  you  mean  to  say,"  said  Mr.  Fyshe, 
speaking  very  slowly,  "that  there  is  no  dinner?" 

"I'm  sorry,  sir,"  moaned  the  waiter.  "It 
appears  the  chef  hadn't  even  cooked  it.  Be- 
yond what's  on  the  table,  sir,  there's  nothing." 

The  social  catastrophe  had  come. 
42 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

Mr.  Fyshe  sat  silent  with  his  fist  clenched. 
Dr.  Boomer,  with  his  great  face  transfixed, 
stared  at  the  empty  oyster-shells,  thinking  per- 
haps of  his  college  days.  The  Duke,  with  his 
hundred  thousand  dashed  from  his  lips  in  the 
second  cup  of  champagne  that  was  never  served, 
thought  of  his  politeness  first  and  murmured 
something  about  taking  them  to  his  hotel. 

But  there  is  no  need  to  follow  the  unhappy 
details  of  the  unended  dinner.  Mr.  Fyshe's 
one  idea  was  to  be  gone:  he  was  too  true  an 
artist  to  think  that  finance  could  be  carried  on 
over  the  table-cloth  of  a  second-rate  restaurant, 
or  on  an  empty  stomach  in  a  deserted  club.  The 
thing  must  be  done  over  again ;  he  must  wait  his 
time  and  begin  anew. 

And  so  it  came  about  that  the  little  dinner- 
party of  Mr.  Lucullus  Fyshe  dissolved  itself 
into  its  constituent  elements,  like  broken  pieces 
of  society  in  the  great  cataclysm  portrayed  by 
Mr.  Fyshe  himself. 

The  Duke  was  bowled  home  in  a  snorting 
motor  to  the  brilliant  rotunda  of  the  Grand 
Palaver,  itself  waiterless  and  supperless. 

The  rector  of  St.  Asaph's  wandered  off  home 
to  his  rectory,  musing  upon  the  contents  of  its 
pantry. 

And  Mr.  Fyshe  and  the  gigantic  Doctor 
walked  side  by  side  homewards  along  Plutoria 
Avenue,  beneath  the  elm  trees. 

43 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

Nor  had  they  gone  any  great  distance  before 
Dr.  Boomer  fell  to  talking  of  the  Duke. 

"A  charming  man,"  he  said,  "delightful.  I 
feel  extremely  sorry  for  him." 

"No  worse  off,  I  presume,  than  any  of  the 
rest  of  us,"  growled  Mr.  Fyshe,  who  was  feel- 
ing in  the  sourest  of  democratic  moods;  "a  man 
doesn't  need  to  be  a  duke  to  have  a  stomach." 

"Oh,  pooh,  pooh!"  said  the  president,  wav- 
ing the  topic  aside  with  his  hand  in  the  air;  "I 
don't  refer  to  that.  Oh,  not  at  all.  I  was 
thinking  of  his  financial  position — an  ancient 
family  like  the  Dulhams;  it  seems  too  bad  al- 
together." 

For,  of  course,  to  an  achaeologist  like  Dr. 
Boomer  an  intimate  acquaintance  with  the  pedi- 
gree and  fortunes  of  the  greater  ducal  families 
from  Jock  of  Ealing  downwards  was  nothingc 
It  went  without  saying.  As  beside  the  Neander- 
thal skull  and  the  Bimbaweh  ruins  it  didn't 
count. 

Mr.  Fyshe  stopped  absolutely  still  in  his 
tracks.  "His  financial  position?"  he  questioned, 
quick  as  a  lynx. 

"Certainly,"  said  Dr.  Boomer;  "I  had  taken 
it  for  granted  that  you  knew.  The  Dulham 
family  are  practically  ruined.  The  Duke,  I 
imagine,  Is  under  the  necessity  of  mortgaging 
his  estates;  indeed,  I  should  suppose  he  is  here 
in  America  to  raise  money.'* 

44 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

Mr.  Fyshe  was  a  man  of  lightning  action. 
Any  man  accustomed  to  the  Stock  Exchange 
learns  to  think  quickly. 

"One  moment  1"  he  cried;  "I  see  we  are  right 
at  your  door.  May  I  just  run  in  and  use  your 
telephone?  I  want  to  call  up  Boulder  for  a 
moment." 

Two  minutes  later  Mr.  Fyshe  was  saying  into 
the  telephone,  "Oh,  is  that  you,  Boulder?  I 
was  looking  for  you  in  vain  to-day — wanted 
you  to  meet  the  Duke  of  Dulham,  who  came  in 
quite  unexpectedly  from  New  York;  felt  sure 
you'd  like  to  meet  him.  Wanted  you  at  the 
club  for  dinner,  and  now  it  turns  out  that  the 
club's  all  upset — waiters'  strike  or  some  such 
rascality — and  the  Palaver,  so  I  hear,  is  in  the 
same  fix.    Could  you  possibly " 

Here  Mr.  Fyshe  paused,  listening  a  moment 
and  then  went  on,  "Yes,  yes;  an  excellent  idea 
— ^most  kind  of  you.  Pray  do  send  your  motor 
to  the  hotel  and  give  the  Duke  a  bite  of  dinner. 
No,  I  won't  join  you,  thanks.  Most  kind. 
Good-night " 

And  within  a  few  minutes  more  the  motor  of 
Mr.  Boulder  was  rolling  down  from  Plutoria 
Avenue  to  the  Grand  Palaver  Hotel. 

What  passed  between  Mr.  Boulder  and  the 
Duke  that  evening  is  not  known.  That  they 
must  have  proved  congenial  company  to  one 

45 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

another  there  is  no  doubt.  In  fact,  it  would 
seem  that,  dissimilar  as  they  were  in  many 
ways,  they  found  a  common  bond  of  interest  in 
sport.  And  it  is  quite  likely  that  Mr.  Boulder 
may  have  mentioned  that  he  had  a  hunting- 
lodge — what  the  Duke  would  call  a  shooting- 
box — in  Wisconsin  woods,  and  that  it  was  made 
of  logs,  rough  cedar  logs  not  squared,  and  that 
the  tiniber  wolves  and  others  which  surrounded 
it  were  of  a  ferocity  without  parallel. 

Those  who  know  the  Duke  best  could  meas- 
ure the  effect  of  that  upon  his  temperament. 

At  any  rate,  it  is  certain  that  Mr.  Lucullus 
Fyshe  at  his  breakfast-table  next  morning 
chuckled  with  suppressed  joy  to  read  in  the 
Plutopian  Citizen  the  item : 

"We  learn  that  the  Duke  of  Dulham,  who 
has  been  paying  a  brief  visit  to  the  City,  leaves 
this  morning  with  Mr.  Asmodeus  Boulder  for 
the  Wisconsin  woods.  We  understand  that 
Mr.  Boulder  intends  to  show  his  guest,  who  is 
an  ardent  sportsman,  something  of  the  Ameri- 
can wolf." 

•  •  •  •  • 

And  so  the  Duke  went  whirling  westwards 
and  northwards  with  Mr.  Boulder  in  the  draw- 
ing-room end  of  a  Pullman  car,  that  was  all  lit- 
tered up  with  double-barrelled  express  rifles 
and  leather  game  bags,  and  lynx  catchers  and 
wolf  traps  and  Heaven  knows  what.    And  the 

46 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

Duke  had  on  his  very  roughest  sporting  suit, 
made,  apparently,  of  alligator  hide;  and  as  he 
sat  there  with  a  rifle  across  his  knees,  while  the 
train  swept  onward  through  open  fields  and 
broken  woods,  the  real  country  at  last,  towards 
the  Wisconsin  forest,  there  was  such  a  light  of 
genial  happiness  in  his  face  that  had  not  been 
seen  there  since  he  had  been  marooned  in  the 
mud  jungles  of  Upper  Burmah. 

And  opposite,  Mr.  Boulder  looked  at  him 
with  fixed,  silent  eyes,  and  murmured  from  time 
to  time  some  renewed  information  of  the  feroc- 
ity of  the  timber  wolf. 

But  of  wolves  other  than  the  timber  wolf, 
and  fiercer  still,  into  whose  hands  the  Duke 
might  fall  in  America,  he  spoke  never  a  word. 

Nor  is  it  known  in  the  record  what  happened 
in  Wisconsin,  and  to  the  Mausoleum  Club  the 
Duke  and  his  visit  remained  only  as  a  passing 
and  a  pleasant  memory. 


47 


Chapter  II. — The  Wizard  of  Finance 

DOWN  in  the  City  itself,  just  below  the 
residential  street  where  the  Mauso- 
leum Club  is  situated,  there  stands 
overlooking  Central  Square  the 
Grand  Palaver  Hotel.  It  is,  in  truth,  at  no 
great  distance  from  the  club,  not  half  a  minute 
in  one's  motor.  In  fact,  one  could  almost 
walk  it. 

But  in  Central  Square  the  quiet  of  Plutoria 
Avenue  is  exchanged  for  another  atmosphere. 
There  are  fountains  that  splash  unendingly  and 
mingle  their  music  with  the  sound  of  the  motor- 
horns  and  the  clatter  of  the  cabs.  There  are 
real  trees  and  little  green  benches,  with  people 
reading  yesterday's  newspaper,  and  grass  cut 
into  plots  among  the  asphalt.  There  is  at  one 
end  a  statue  of  the  first  governor  of  the  state, 
life-size,  cut  in  stone ;  and  at  the  other  a  statue 
of  the  last,  ever  so  much  larger  than  life,  cast 
in  bronze.  And  all  the  people  who  pass  by 
pause  and  look  at  this  statue  and  point  at  it  with 
walking  sticks,  because  it  is  of  extraordinary 
interest;  in  fact,  it  is  an  example  of  the  new 
electro-chemical  process  of  casting  by  which  you 

48 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

can  cast  a  state  governor  any  size  you  like,  no 
matter  what  you  start  from.  Those  who  know 
about  such  things  explain  what  an  interesting 
contrast  the  two  statues  are;  for  in  the  case  of 
the  governor  of  a  hundred  years  ago  one  had  to 
start  from  plain,  rough  material  and  work  pa- 
tiently for  years  to  get  the  effect,  whereas  now 
the  material  doesn't  matter  at  all,  and  with  any 
sort  of  scrap,  treated  in  the  gas  furnace  under 
tremendous  pressure,  one  may  make  a  figure  of 
colossal  size  like  the  one  In  Central  Square. 

So  naturally  Central  Square  with  Its  trcci 
and  Its  fountains  and  its  statues  is  one  of  the 
places  of  chief  interest  In  the  City.  But  espe- 
cially because  there  stands  along  one  side  of  It 
the  vast  pile  of  the  Grand  Palaver  Hotel.  It 
rises  fifteen  stories  high  and  fills  all  one  side 
of  the  square.  It  has,  overlooking  the  trees  in 
the  square,  twelve  hundred  rooms  with  three 
thousand  windows,  and  it  would  have  held  all 
George  Washington's  army.  Even  people  In 
other  cities  who  have  never  seen  It  know  It  well 
from  Its  advertising;  "the  most  homelike  hotel 
in  America,"  so  it  is  labelled  In  all  the  maga- 
zines, the  expensive  ones,  on  the  continent.  In 
fact,  the  aim  of  the  company  that  owns  the 
Grand  Palaver — and  they  do  not  attempt  to 
conceal  It — is  to  make  the  place  as  much  a  home 
as  possible.  Therein  lies  Its  charm.  It  it  « 
home.     You  realise  that  when  you  look  up  at 

49 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

the  Grand  Palaver  from  the  square  at  night 
when  the  twelve  hundred  guests  have  turned 
on  the  lights  of  the  three  thousand  windows. 
You  realise  it  at  theatre  time  when  the  great 
strings  of  motors  come  sweeping  to  the  doors 
of  the  Palaver,  to  carry  the  twelve  hundred 
guests  to  twelve  hundred  seats  in  the  theatres 
at  four  dollars  a  seat.  But  most  of  all  do  you 
appreciate  the  character  of  the  Grand  Palaver 
when  you  step  into  Its  rotunda.  Aladdin's 
enchanted  palace  was  nothing  to  it.  It  has  a 
vast  ceiling  with  a  hundred  glittering  lights,  and 
within  it  night  and  day  Is  a  surging  crowd  that 
is  never  still  and  a  babel  of  voices  that  Is  never 
hushed,  and  over  all  there  hangs  an  enchanted 
cloud  of  thin  blue  tobacco  smoke  such  as  might 
enshroud  the  conjured  vision  of  a  magician  of 
Bagdad  or  Damascus. 

In  and  through  the  rotunda  there  are  palm- 
trees  to  rest  the  eye  and  rubber-trees  in  boxes 
to  soothe  the  mind,  and  there  are  great  leather 
lounges  and  deep  arm-chairs,  and  here  and 
there  huge  brass  ash-bowls  as  big  as  Etruscan 
tear-jugs.  Along  one  side  Is  a  counter  with 
grated  wickets  like  a  bank,  and  behind  it  are 
five  clerks  with  flattened  hair  and  tall  collars, 
dressed  In  long  black  frock-coats  all  day  like 
members  of  a  legislature.  They  have  great 
books  in  front  of  them  in  which  they  study  un- 
ceasingly, and  at  their  lightest  thought  they 

so 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

strike  a  bell  with  the  open  palm  of  their  hand, 
and  at  the  sound  of  it  a  page  boy  in  a  monkey 
suit,  with  G.  P.  stamped  all  over  him  in  brass, 
bounds  to  the  desk  and  off  again,  shouting  a 
call  into  the  unheeding  crowd  vociferously.  The 
sound  of  it  fills  for  a  moment  the  great  space 
of  the  rotunda;  it  echoes  down  the  corridors  to 
the  side ;  it  floats,  softly  melodious,  through  the 
palm-trees  of  the  ladies'  palm  room ;  it  is  heard; 
fainter  and  fainter,  in  the  distant  grill,  and  in 
the  depths  of  the  barber  shop  below  the  level 
of  the  street  the  barber  arrests  a  moment  the 
drowsy  hum  of  his  shampoo  brushes  to  catch 
the  sound — as  might  a  miner  in  the  sunken  gal- 
leries of  a  coastal  mine  cease  in  his  toil  a  mo- 
ment to  hear  the  distant  murmur  of  the  sea. 

And  the  clerks  call  for  the  pages,  the  pages 
call  for  the  guests,  and  the  guests  call  for  the 
porters,  the  bells  clang,  the  elevators  rattle, 
till  home  itself  was  never  half  so  home-like. 

"A  call  for  Mr.  Tomlinson  I    A  call  for  Mr. 

Tomlinson  I" 

So  went  the  sound,  echoing  through  the  ro- 
tunda. 

And  as  the  page  boy  found  him  and  handed 
him  on  a  salver  a  telegram  to  read,  the  eyes  of 
the  crowd  about  him  turned  for  a  moment  to 
look  upon  the  figure  of  Tomlinson,  the  Wizard 
of  Finance. 

51 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

There  he  stood  In  his  wide-awake  hat  and  his 
long  black  coat,  his  shoulders  slightly  bent  with 
his  fifty-eight  years.  Anyone  who  had  known 
him  in  the  olden  days  on  his  bush  farm  beside 
Tomlinson's  Creek  in  the  country  of  the  Great 
Lakes  would  have  recognised  him  in  a  moment. 
There  was  still  on  his  face  that  strange,  puzzled 
look  that  it  habitually  wore,  only  now,  of  course, 
the  financial  papers  were  calling  it  "unfathom- 
able." There  was  a  certain  way  in  which  his 
eye  roved  to  and  fro  inquiringly  that  might 
have  looked  like  perplexity,  were  it  not  that 
the  Financial  Undertone  had  recognised  it  as 
the  "searching  look  of  a  captain  of  industry." 
One  might  have  thought  that  for  all  the  good- 
ness in  It  there  was  something  simple  in  his  face, 
were  It  not  that  the  Commercial  and  Pictorial 
Review  had  called  the  face  "inscrutable,"  and 
had  proved  It  so  with  an  illustration  that  left 
no  doubt  of  the  matter.  Indeed,  the  face  of 
Tomlinson  of  Tomlinson's  Creek,  now  Tom- 
llnson  the  Wizard  of  Finance,  was  not  com- 
monly spoken  of  as  a  face  by  the  paragraphers 
of  the  Saturday  magazine  sections,  but  was 
more  usually  referred  to  as  a  mask;  and  It 
would  appear  that  Napoleon  the  First  had  had 
one  also.  The  Saturday  editors  were  never 
tired  of  describing  the  strange,  impressive  per- 
sonality of  Tomlinson,  the  great  dominating 
character  of  the  newest  and  highest  finance. 

52 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

From  the  moment  when  the  interim  prospectus 
of  the  Erie  Auriferous  Consolidated  had  broken 
like  a  tidal  wave  over  Stock  Exchange  circles, 
the  picture  of  Tomlinson,  the  sleeping  share- 
holder of  uncomputed  millions,  had  filled  the  im- 
agination of  every  dreamer  in  a  nation  of  poets. 

They  all  described  him.  And  when  each  had 
finished  he  began  again. 

"The  face,"  so  wrote  the  editor  of  the  "Our 
Own  Men"  section  of  Ourselves  Monthly,  "is 
that  of  a  typical  American  captain  of  finance, 
hard,  yet  with  a  certain  softness,  broad  but  with 
a  certain  length,  ductile  but  not  without  its  own 
firmness." 

"The  mouth,"  so  wrote  the  editor  of  the 
"Success"  column  of  Brains,  "is  strong  but  pli- 
able, the  jaw  firm  and  yet  movable,  while  there 
is  something  in  the  set  of  the  ear  that  suggests 
the  swift,  eager  mind  of  the  born  leader  of 
men." 

So  from  state  to  state  ran  the  portrait  of 
Tomlinson  of  Tomlinson's  Creek,  drawn  by 
people  who  had  never  seen  him;  so  did  it  reach 
out  and  cross  the  ocean,  till  the  French  journals 
inserted  a  picture  which  they  used  for  such  oc- 
casions, and  called  it  Monsieur  Tomlinson, 
nouveau  capitaine  de  la  haute  finance  en 
Amerique;  and  the  German  weeklies,  inserting 
also  a  suitable  picture  from  their  stock,  marked 
it  Herr  Tomlinson,  Amerikanischer  Industrie- 

53 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

und  Finanzcapitdn.  Thus  did  Tomlinson  float 
from  Tomlinson's  Creek  beside  Lake  Erie  to 
the  very  banks  of  the  Danube  and  the  Drave. 

Some  writers  grew  lyric  about  him.  What 
visions,  they  asked,  could  one  but  read  them, 
must  lie  behind  the  quiet,  dreaming  eyes  of  that 
inscrutable  face? 

They  might  have  read  them  easily  enough, 
had  they  but  had  the  key.  Anyone  who  looked 
upon  Tomlinson  as  he  stood  there  in  the  roar 
and  clatter  of  the  great  rotunda  of  the  Grand 
Palaver  with  the  telegram  in  his  hand,  fumbling 
at  the  wrong  end  to  open  it,  might  have  read  the 
visions  of  the  master-mind  had  he  but  known 
their  nature.  They  were  simple  enough.  For 
the  visions  in  the  mind  of  Tomlinson,  Wizard 
of  Finance,  were  for  the  most  part  those  of  a 
wind-swept  hillside  farm  beside  Lake  Erie, 
where  Tomlinson's  Creek  runs  down  to  the  low 
edge  of  the  lake,  and  where  the  off-shore  wind 
ripples  the  rushes  of  the  shallow  water:  that, 
and  the  vision  of  a  frame  house,  and  the  snake 
fences  of  the  fourth  concession  road  where  it 
falls  to  the  lakeside.  And  if  the  eyes  of  the 
man  are  dreamy  and  abstracted,  it  is  because 
there  lies  over  the  vision  of  this  vanished  farm 
an  infinite  regret,  greater  in  its  compass  than 
all  the  shares  the  Erie  Auriferous  Consolidated 
has  ever  thrown  upon  the  market. 


54 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

When  Tomlinson  had  opened  the  telegram 
he  stood  with  It  for  a  moment  in  his  hand,  look- 
ing the  boy  full  in  the  face.  His  look  had  in  it 
that  peculiar  far-away  quality  that  the  news- 
papers were  calling  "Napoleonic  abstraction." 
In  reality  he  was  wondering  whether  to  give  the 
boy  twenty-five  cents  or  fifty. 

The  message  that  he  had  just  read  was 
worded,  "Morning  quotations  show  preferred 
A.  G.  falling  rapidly  recommend  instant  sale 
no  confidence  send  instructions." 

The  Wizard  of  Finance  took  from  his  pocket 
a  pencil  (it  was  a  carpenter's  pencil)  and  wrote 
across  the  face  of  the  message, 

"Buy  me  quite  a  bit  more  of  the  same  yours 
truly." 

This  he  gave  to  the  boy.  "Take  It  over  to 
him,"  he  said,  pointing  to  the  telegraph  corner 
of  the  rotunda.  Then  after  another  pause  he 
mumbled,  "Here,  sonny,"  and  gave  the  boy  a 
dollar. 

With  that  he  turned  to  walk  towards  the  ele- 
vator, and  all  the  people  about  him  who  had 
watched  the  signing  of  the  message  knew  that 
some  big  financial  deal  was  going  through — a 
coup,  in  fact,  they  called  it. 

The  elevator  took  the  Wizard  to  the  second 
floor.  As  he  went  up  he  felt  in  his  pocket  and 
gripped  a  quarter,  then  changed  his  mind  and 
felt  for  a  fifty-cent  piece,  and  finally  gave  them 

55 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

both  to  the  elevator  boy,  after  which  he  walked 
along  the  corridor  till  he  reached  the  corner 
suite  of  rooms,  a  palace  in  itself,  for  which  he 
was  paying  a  thousand  dollars  a  month  ever 
since  the  Erie  Auriferous  Consolidated  Com- 
pany had  begun  tearing  up  the  bed  of  Tomlin- 
son's  Creek  in  Cahoga  County  with  its  hy- 
draulic dredges. 

"Well,  mother,"  he  said  as  he  entered. 

There  was  a  woman  seated  near  the  window, 
a  woman  with  a  plain,  homely  face  such  as  they 
wear  in  the  farm  kitchens  of  Cahoga  County, 
and  a  set  of  fashionable  clothes  upon  her  such 
as  they  sell  to  the  ladies  of  Plutoria  Avenue. 

This  was  'mother,'  th^  wife  of  the  Wizard 
of  Finance  and  eight  years  younger  than  him- 
self. And  she  too  was  in  the  papers  and  the 
public  eye ;  and  whatsoever  the  shops  had  fresh 
from  Paris,  at  fabulous  prices,  that  they  sold 
to  mother.  They  had  put  a  Balkan  hat  upon 
her  with  an  upright  feather,  and  they  had  hung 
gold  chains  on  her,  and  everything  that  was 
most  expensive  they  had  hung  and  tied  on 
mother.  You  might  see  her  emerging  any  morn- 
ing from  the  Grand  Palaver  in  her  beetle-back 
jacket  and  her  Balkan  hat,  a  figure  of  infinite 
pathos.  And  whatever  she  wore,  the  lady  ed- 
itors of  Spring!  Notes  and  Causerie  du  Boudoir 
wrote  it  out  in  French,  and  one  paper  had  called 
her  a  helle  chatelaine,  and  another  had  spoken 

$6 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

of  her  as  a  grande  dame,  which  the  Tomlinsons 
thought  must  be  a  misprint. 

But  in  any  case,  for  Tomlinson  the  Wizard 
of  Finance  it  was  a  great  relief  to  have  as  his 
wife  a  woman  like  mother,  because  he  knew  that 
she  had  taught  school  in  Cahoga  County  and 
could  hold  her  own  in  the  city  with  any  of 
them. 

So  mother  spent  her  time  sitting  in  her  beetle 
jacket  in  the  thousand-dollar  suite,  reading  new 
novels  in  brilliant  paper  covers.  And  the  Wiz- 
ard on  his  trips  up  and  down  to  the  rotunda 
brought  her  the  very  best,  the  ones  that  cost  a 
dollar  fifty,  because  he  knew  that  out  home  she 
had  only  been  able  to  read  books  like  Nathaniel 
Hawthorne  and  Walter  Scott,  that  were  only 
worth  ten  c6nts. 

"How's  Fred?"  said  the  Wizard,  laying  aside 
his  hat,  and  looking  towards  the  closed  door  of 
an  inner  room.     "Is  he  better?" 

"Some,"  said  mother.  "He's  dressed,  but 
he's  lying  down." 

Fred  was  the  son  of  the  Wizard  and  mother. 
In  the  inner  room  he  lay  on  a  sofa,  a  great 
hulking  boy  of  seventeen  in  a  flowered  dressing- 
gown,  fancying  himself  ill.  There  was  a  packet 
of  cigarettes  and  a  box  of  chocolates  on  a  chair 
beside  him,  and  he  had  the  blind  drawn  and  his 
eyes  half-closed  to  impress  himself. 

57 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

Yet  this  was  the  same  boy  that  less  than  a 
year  ago  on  Tomlinson's  Creek  had  worn  a 
rough  store  suit  and  set  his  sturdy  shoulders  to 
the  buck-saw.  At  present  Fortune  was  busy 
taking  from  him  the  golden  gifts  which  the 
fairies  of  Cahoga  County,  Lake  Erie,  had  laid 
In  his  cradle  seventeen  years  ago. 

The  Wizard  tip-toed  into  the  inner  room, 
and  from  the  open  door  his  listening  wife  could 
hear  the  voice  of  the  boy  saying,  in  a  tone  as  of 
one  distraught  with  suffering: 

"Is  there  any  more  of  that  jelly?" 

"Could  he  have  any,  do  you  suppose?"  asked 
Tomlinson  coming  back. 

"It's  all  right,"  said  mother,  "if  it  will  sit 
on  his  stomach." 

For  this,  in  the  dietetics  of  Cahoga  County, 
is  the  sole  test.  All  those  things  can  be  eaten 
which  will  sit  on  the  stomach.  Anything  that 
won't  sit  there  is  not  eatable. 

"Do  you  suppose  I  could  get  them  to  get 
any?"  questioned  Tomlinson.  "Would  it  be  all 
right  to  telephone  down  to  the  office,  or  do  you 
think  it  would  be  better  to  ring?" 

"Perhaps,"  said  his  wife,  "it  would  be  better 
to  look  out  into  the  hall  and  see  if  there  isn't 
someone  round  that  would  tell  them." 

This  was  the  kind  of  problem  with  which 
Tomlinson  and  his  wife,  in  their  thousand-dol- 
lar suite  in  the  Grand  Palaver,  grappled  all 

S8 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

day.  And  when  presently  a  tall  waiter  in  dress- 
clothes  appeared,  and  said,  "Jelly?  Yes,  sir, 
immediately,  sir;  would  you  like,  sir.  Mara- 
schino, sir,  or  Portovino,  sir?"  Tomlinson 
gazed  at  him  gloomily,  wondering  if  he  would 
take  five  dollars. 

"What  does  the  doctor  say  is  wrong  with 
Fred?"  asked  Tomlinson,  when  the  waiter  had 
gone. 

"He  don't  just  say,"  said  mother;  "he  said 
he  must  keep  very  quiet.  He  looked  in  this 
morning  for  a  minute  or  two,  and  he  said  he'd 
look  in  later  in  the  day  again.  But  he  said  to 
keep  Fred  very  quiet." 

Exactly  I  In  other  words  Fred  had  pretty 
much  the  same  complaint  as  the  rest  of  Dr. 
Slyder's  patients  on  Flutoria  Avenue,  and  was 
to  be  treated  in  the  same  way.  Dr.  Slyder, 
who  was  the  most  fashionable  practitioner  in 
the  City,  spent  his  entire  time  moving  to  and 
fro  in  an  almost  noiseless  motor  earnestly  ad- 
vising people  to  keep  quiet.  "You  must  keep 
very  quiet  for  a  little  while,"  he  would  say  with 
a  sigh,  as  he  sat  beside  a  sick-bed.  As  he  drew 
on  his  gloves  in  the  hall  below  he  would  shake 
his  head  very  impressively  and  say,  "You  must 
keep  him  very  quiet,"  and  so  pass  out,  quite 
soundlessly.  By  this  means  Dr.  Slyder  often 
succeeded  in  keeping  people  quiet  for  weeks. 
It  was  all  the  medicine  that  he  knew.     But  it 

59 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

was  enough.  And  as  his  patients  always  got 
well — there  being  nothing  wrong  with  them — 
his  reputation  was  immense. 

Very  naturally  the  Wizard  and  his  wife  were 
impressed  with  him.  They  had  never  seen  such 
therapeutics  in  Cahoga  County,  where  the  prac- 
tice of  medicine  is  carried  on  with  forceps, 
pumps,  squirts,  splints,  and  other  instruments 
of  violence. 

The  waiter  had  hardly  gone  when  a  boy  ap- 
peared at  the  door.  This  time  he  presented 
to  Tomlinson  not  one  telegram  but  a  little  bun- 
dle of  them. 

The  Wizard  read  them  with  a  lengthening 
face.  The  first  ran  something  like  this,  "Con- 
gratulate you  on  your  daring  market  turned 
instantly";  and  the  next,  "Your  opinion  justi- 
fied market  rose  have  sold  at  20  points  profit"; 
and  a  third,  "Your  forecast  entirely  correct 
C.  P.  rose  at  once  send  further  instructions." 

These  and  similar  messages  were  from  brok- 
ers' offices,  and  all  of  them  were  in  the  same 
tone;  one  told  him  that  C.  P.  was  up,  and  an- 
other T.  G.  P.  had  passed  129,  and  another 
that  T.  C.  R.  R.  had  risen  ten — all  of  which 
things  were  imputed  to  the  wonderful  sagacity 
of  Tomlinson.  Whereas  if  they  had  told  him 
that  X.  Y.  Z.  had  risen  to  the  moon  he  would 
have  been  just  as  wise  as  to  what  it  meant. 

"Well,"  said  the  wife  of  the  Wizard  as  her 
60 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

husband  finished  looking  through  the  reports, 
"how  are  things  this  morning?  Are  they  any 
better?" 

"No,"  said  Tomlinson,  and  he  sighed  as  he 
said  it;  "this  is  the  worst  day  yet.  It's  just  been 
a  shower  of  telegrams,  and  mostly  all  the  same. 
I  can't  do  the  figuring  of  it  like  you  can,  but  I 
reckon  I  must  have  made  another  hundred  thou- 
sand dollars  since  yesterday." 

"You  don't  say  sol"  said  mother,  and  they 
looked  at  one  another  gloomily. 

"And  half  a  million  last  week,  wasn't  it?" 
said  Tomlinson  as  he  sank  into  a  chair.  "I'm 
afraid,  mother,"  he  continued,  "it's  no  good. 
We  don't  know  how.  We  weren't  brought  up 
to  it." 

All  of  which  meant  that  if  the  editor  of  the 
Monetary  Afternoon  or  Financial  Sunday  had 
been  able  to  know  what  was  happening  with 
the  two  wizards,  he  could  have  written  up  a 
news  story  calculated  to  electrify  all  America. 

For  the  truth  was  that  Tomlinson,  the  Wizard 
of  Finance,  was  attempting  to  carry  out  a  coup 
greater  than  any  as  yet  attributed  to  him  by  the 
Press.  He  was  trying  to  lose  his  money.  That, 
in  the  sickness  of  his  soul,  crushed  by  the  Grand 
Palaver,  overwhelmed  with  the  burden  of  high 
finance,  had  become  his  aim,  to  be  done  with  it, 
to  get  rid  of  his  whole  fortune. 

But  if  you  own  a  fortune  that  Is  computed 
6i 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

anywhere  from  fifty  millions  up,  with  no  limit 
at  the  top,  if  you  own  one-half  of  all  the  pre- 
ferred stock  of  an  Erie  Auriferous  Consoli- 
dated that  is  digging  gold  in  hydraulic  bucket- 
fuls  from  a  quarter  of  a  mile  of  river  bed,  the 
task  of  losing  it  is  no  easy  matter. 

There  are  men,  no  doubt,  versed  in  finance, 
who  might  succeed  in  doing  it.  But  they  have 
a  training  that  Tomlinson  lacked.  Invest  it  as 
he  would  in  the  worst  securities  that  offered, 
the  most  rickety  of  stock,  the  most  fraudulent 
bonds,  back  it  came  to  him.  •  When  he  threw  a 
handful  away,  back  came  two  in  its  place.  And 
at  every  new  coup  the  crowd  applauded  the 
incomparable  daring,  the  unparalleled  presci' 
ence  of  the  Wizard. 

Like  the  touch  of  Midas,  his  hand  turned 
everything  to  gold. 

"Mother,"  he  repeated,  "it's  no  use.  It's 
like  this  here  Destiny,  as  the  books  call  it." 

•  •  •  •  • 

The  great  fortune  that  Tomlinson,  the  Wiz- 
ard of  Finance,  was  trying  his  best  to  lose  had 
come  to  him  with  wonderful  suddenness.  As 
yet  it  was  hardly  six  months  old.  As  to  how 
it  had  originated,  there  were  all  sorts  of  stories 
afloat  in  the  weekly  illustrated  press.  They 
agreed  mostly  on  the  general  basis  that  Tom- 
linson had  made  his  vast  fortune  by  his  own 
indomitable  pluck  and  dogged  industry.    Some 

62 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

said  that  he  had  been  at  one  time  a  mere  farm 
hand  who,  by  sheer  doggedness,  had  fought  his 
way  from  the  hay-mow  to  the  control  of  the 
produce  market  of  seventeen  states.  Others 
had  it  that  he  had  been  a  lumber-jack  who,  by 
sheer  doggedness,  had  got  possession  of  the 
whole  lumber  forest  of  the  Lake  district.  Oth- 
ers said  that  he  had  been  a  miner  in  a  Lake 
Superior  copper  mine  who  had,  by  the  dogged- 
ness of  hh  character,  got  a  practical  monopoly 
of  the  copper  supply.  These  Saturday  articles, 
at  any  rate,  made  the  Saturday  reader  rigid 
with  sympathetic  doggedness  himself,  which 
was  all  that  the  editor  (who  was  doggedly  try- 
ing to  make  the  paper  pay)  wanted  to  effect. 

But  in  reality  the  making  of  Tomlinson's  for- 
tune was  very  simple.  The  recipe  for  It  Is  open 
to  anyone.  It  Is  only  necessary  to  own  a  hillside 
farm  beside  Lake  Erie  where  the  uncleared 
bush  and  the  broken  fields  go  straggling  down 
to  the  lake,  and  to  have  running  through  it  a 
creek,  such  as  that  called  Tomlinson's,  brawling 
among  the  stones  and  willows,  and  to  discover 
in  the  bed  of  a  creek— a  gold  mine. 

That  Is  all. 

Nor  is  It  necessary  In  these  well-ordered  days 
to  discover  the  gold  for  one's  self.  One  might 
have  lived  a  lifetime  on  the  farm,  as  Tomlin- 
son's father  had,  and  never  discover  It  for  one's 
self.    For  that  indeed  the  best  medium  of  des- 

63 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

tiny  Is  a  geologist,  let  us  say  the  senior  professor 
of  geology  at  Plutoria  University. 

That  was  how  it  happened. 

The  senior  professor,  so  it  chanced,  was 
spending  his  vacation  near  by  on  the  shores  of 
the  lake,  and  his  time  was  mostly  passed — for 
how  better  can  a  man  spend  a  month  of  pleas- 
ure?— In  looking  for  outcroppings  of  Devonian 
rock  of  the  post-tertiary  period.  For  which 
purpose  he  carried  a  vacation  hammer  In  his 
pocket,  and  made  from  time  to  time  a  note  or 
two  as  he  went  along,  or  filled  his  pockets  with 
the  chipplngs  of  vacation  rocks. 

So  It  chanced  that  he  came  to  Tomllnson's 
Creek  at  the  very  point  where  a  great  slab  of 
Devonian  rock  bursts  through  the  clay  of  the 
bank.  When  the  senior  professor  of  geology 
saw  it  and  noticed  a  stripe  like  a  mark  on  a 
tiger's  back — a  fault  he  called  It — that  ran  over 
the  face  of  the  block,  he  was  at  It  in  an  Instant, 
beating  off  fragments  with  his  little  hammer. 

Tomlinson  and  his  boy  Fred  were  logging  In 
the  underbrush  near  by  with  a  long  chain  and 
yoke  of  oxen,  but  the  geologist  was  so  excited 
that  he  did  not  see  them  till  the  sound  of  his 
eager  hammer  had  brought  them  to  his  side. 
They  took  him  up  to  the  frame  house  In  the 
clearing,  where  the  chatelaine  was  hoeing  a 
potato  patch  with  a  man's  hat  on  her  head,  and 

64 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

they  gave  him  buttermilk  and  soda  cakes,  but 
his  hand  shook  so  that  he  could  hardly  eat  them. 
The  geologist  left  Cahoga  station  that  night 
for  the  City  with  a  newspaper  full  of  specimens 
inside  his  suit-case,  and  he  knew  that  if  any 
person  or  persons  would  put  up  money  enough 
to  tear  that  block  of  rock  away  and  follow  the 
fissure  down,  there  would  be  found  there  some- 
thing to  astonish  humanity,  geologists  and  all. 

After  that  point  in  the  launching  of  a  gold 
mine  the  rest  is  easy.  Generous,  warm-hearted 
men,  interested  in  geology,  were  soon  found. 
There  was  no  stint  of  money.  The  great  rock 
was  torn  sideways  from  its  place,  and  from  be- 
neath it  the  crumbled,  glittering  rock-dust  that 
sparkled  in  the  sun  was  sent  in  little  boxes  to' 
the  testing  laboratories  of  Plutoria  University. 
There  the  senior  professor  of  geology  had  sat 
up  with  it  far  into  the  night  in  a  darkened 
laboratory,  with  little  blue  flames  playing  under- 
neath crucibles,  as  in  a  magician's  cavern,  and 
with  the  door  locked.  And  as  each  sample  that 
he  tested  was  set  aside  and  tied  in  a  cardboard 
box  by  itself,  he  labelled  it  "aur.  p.  75,"  and 
the  pen  shook  in  his  hand  as  he  marked  it.  For 
to  professors  of  geology  those  symbols  mean 
"this  is  seventy-five  per  cent  pure  gold."  So 
it  was  no  wonder  that  the  senior  professor  of 
geology  working  far  into  the  night  among  the 

6s 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

blue  flames  shook  with  excitement;  not,  of 
course,  for  the  gold's  sake  as  money  (he  had 
no  time  to  think  of  that),  but  because  if  this 
thing  was  true  it  meant  that  an  auriferous  vein 
had  been  found  in  what  was  Devonian  rock 
of  the  post-tertiary  stratification,  and  if  that 
was  so  it  upset  enough  geology  to  spoil  a  text- 
book. It  would  mean  that  the  professor  could 
read  a  paper  at  the  next  Pan-Geological  Con- 
ference that  would  turn  the  whole  assembly  into 
a  bedlam. 

It  pleased  him,  too,  to  know  that  the  men  he 
was  dealing  with  were  generous.  They  had 
asked  him  to  name  his  own  price  for  the  tests 
that  he  made,  and  when  he  had  said  two  dollars 
per  sample  they  had  told  him  to  go  right  ahead. 
The  professor  was  not,  I  suppose,  a  mercenary 
man,  but  it  pleased  him  to  think  that  he  could 
clean  up  sixteen  dollars  in  a  single  evening  in 
his  laboratory.  It  showed,  at  any  rate,  that 
business  men  put  science  at  its  proper  value. 
Strangest  of  all  was  the  fact  that  the  men  had 
told  him  that  even  this  ore  was  apparently  noth- 
ing to  what  there  was;  it  had  all  come  out  of 
one  single  spot  in  the  creek,  not  the  hundredth 
part  of  the  whole  claim.  Lower  down,  where 
they  had  thrown  the  big  dam  across  to  make 
the  bed  dry,  they  were  taking  out  this  same  stuff 
and  even  better,  so  they  said,  in  cartloads. 
The  hydraulic  dredges  were  tearing  it  from  the 

66 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

bed  of  the  creek  all  day,  and  at  night  a  great 
circuit  of  arc  lights  gleamed  and  sputtered  over 
the  roaring  labour  of  the  friends  of  geological 
research. 

Thus  had  the  Erie  Auriferous  Consolidated 
broken  in  a  tidal  wave  over  financial  circles. 
On  the  Stock  Exchange,  in  the  down-town  of- 
fices, and  among  the  palm-trees  of  the  Mauso- 
leum Club  they  talked  of  nothing  else.  And 
so  great  was  the  power  of  the  wave  that  it 
washed  Tomlinson  and  his  wife  along  on  the 
crest  of  it,  and  landed  them  fifty  feet  up  in  their 
thousand-dollar  suite  in  the  Grand  Palaver. 
And  as  a  result  of  it  "mother"  wore  a  beetle- 
back  jacket,  and  Tomlinson  received  a  hundred 
telegrams  a  day,  and  Fred  quit  school  and  ate 
chocolates. 

But  in  the  business  world  the  most  amazing 
thing  about  it  was  the  wonderful  shrewdness  of 
Tomlinson. 

The  first  sign  of  it  had  been  that  he  had  ut- 
terly refused  to  allow  the  Erie  Auriferous  Con- 
solidated (as  the  friends  of  geology  called 
themselves)  to  take  over  the  top  half  of  the 
Tomlinson  farm.  For  the  bottom  part  he  let 
them  give  him  one-half  of  the  preferred  stock 
in  the  company  in  return  for  their  supply  of 
development  capital.  This  was  their  own  prop- 
osition ;  in  fact,  they  reckoned  that  in  doing  this 
they  were  trading  about  two  hundred  thousand 

67 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

dollars'  worth  of  machinery  for,  say  ten  million 
dollars  of  gold.  But  it  frightened  them  when 
Tomlinson  said  "Yes"  to  the  offer,  and  when 
he  said  that  as  to  common  stock  they  might 
keep  it,  it  was  no  use  to  him,  they  were  alarmed 
and  uneasy  till  they  made  him  take  a  block  of 
it  for  the  sake  of  market  confidence. 

But  the  top  end  of  the  farm  he  refused  to 
surrender,  and  the  friends  of  applied  geology 
knew  that  there  must  be  something  pretty  large 
behind  this  refusal;  the  more  so  as  the  reason 
that  Tomlinson  gave  was  such  a  simple  one. 
He  said  that  he  didn't  want  to  part  with  the  top 
end  of  the  place  because  his  father  was  buried 
on  it  beside  the  creek,  and  so  he  didn't  want 
the  dam  higher  up,  not  for  any  consideration. 

This  was  regarded  in  business  circles  as  a 
piece  of  great  shrewdness.  "Says  his  father  is 
buried  there,  eh?     Devilish  shrewd  that!" 

It  was  so  long  since  any  of  the  members  of 
the  Exchange  or  the  Mausoleum  Club  had  wan- 
dered into  such  places  as  Cahoga  County  that 
they  did  not  know  that  there  was  nothing 
strange  in  what  Tomlinson  said.  His  father 
was  buried  there,  on  the  farm  itself,  in  a  grave 
overgrown  with  raspberry  bushes,  and  with  a 
wooden  headstone  encompassed  by  a  square  of 
cedar  rails,  and  slept  as  many  another  pioneer 
of  Cahoga  is  sleeping. 

"Devilish  smart  idea!"  they  said;  and  forth- 
68 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

with  half  the  financial  men  of  the  city  buried 
their  fathers,  or  professed  to  have  done  so,  in 
likely  places — along  the  prospective  right-of- 
way  of  a  suburban  railway,  for  example;  in 
fact,  in  any  place  that  marked  them  out  for  the 
joyous  resurrection  of  an  expropriation  pur- 
chase. 

Thus  the  astounding  shrewdness  of  Tomlin- 
son  rapidly  became  a  legend,  the  more  so  as  he 
turned  everything  he  touched  to  gold. 

They  narrated  little  stories  of  him  in  the 
whiskey-and-soda  corners  of  the  Mausoleum 
Club. 

"I  put  it  to  him  in  a  casual  way,"  related,  for 
example,  Mr.  Lucullus  Fyshe,  "casually,  but 
quite  frankly.  I  said,  'See  here,  this  is  just  a 
bagatelle  to  you,  no  doubt,  but  to  me  it  might 
be  of  some  use.  T.  C.  bonds,'  I  said,  'have 
risen  twenty-two  and  a  half  in  a  week.  You 
know  as  well  as  I  do  that  they  are  only  col- 
lateral trust,  and  that  the  stock  underneath 
never  could  and  never  can  earn  a  par  dividend. 
Now,'  I  said,  *Mr.  Tomlinson,  tell  me  what  all 
that  means?'  Would  you  believe  it,  the  fellow 
looked  me  right  in  the  face  in  that  queer  way  he 
has  and  he  said,  'I  don't  know!'  " 

"He  said  he  didn't  know!"  repeated  the  lis- 
tener, in  a  tone  of  amazement  and  respect. 
"By  Jove!  eh?  he  said  he  didn't  know!  The 
man's  a  wizard!" 

69 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

"And  he  looked  as  if  he  didn't  I"  went  on 
Mr.  Fyshe.  "That's  the  deuce  of  it.  That 
man  when  he  wants  to  can  put  on  a  look,  sir, 
that  simply  means  nothing,  absolutely  nothing." 

In  this  way  Tomlinson  had  earned  his  name 
of  the  Wizard  of  American  Finance. 

And  meantime  Tomlinson  and  his  wife, 
within  their  suite  at  the  Grand  Palaver,  had 
long  since  reached  their  decision.  For  there 
was  one  aspect  and  only  one  In  which  Tomlin- 
son was  really  and  truly  a  wizard.  He  saw 
clearly  that  for  himself  and  his  wife  the  vast 
fortune  that  had  fallen  to  them  was  of  no  man- 
ner of  use.  What  did  It  bring  them?  The 
noise  and  roar  of  the  City  In  place  of  the  silence 
of  the  farm  and  the  racket  of  the  great  rotunda 
to  drown  the  remembered  murmur  of  the  waters 
of  the  creek. 

So  Tomlinson  had  decided  to  rid  himself  of 
his  new  wealth,  save  only  such  as  might  be 
needed  to  make  his  son  a  different  kind  of  man 
from  himself. 

"For  Fred,  of  course,"  he  said,  "It's  different. 
But  out  of  such  a  lot  as  that  It'll  be  easy  to  keep 
enough  for  him.  It'll  be  a  grand  thing  for 
Fred,  this  money.  He  won't  have  to  grow  up 
like  you  and  me.  He'll  have  opportunities  we 
never  got." 

He  was  getting  them  already.  The  oppor- 
tunity to  wear  seven-dollar  patent  leather  shoes 

70 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

and  a  bell-shaped  overcoat  with  a  silk  collar, 
to  lounge  into  moving  picture  shows  and  eat 
chocolates  and  smoke  cigarettes — all  these  op- 
portunities he  was  gathering  immediately. 
Presently,  when  he  learned  his  way  round  a 
little,  he  would  get  still  bigger  ones. 

"He's  improving  fast,"  said  mother.  She 
was  thinking  of  his  patent  leather  shoes. 

"He's  popular,"  said  his  father.  "I 
notice  it  downstairs.  He  sasses  any  of  them 
just  as  he  likes;  and  no  matter  how  busy  they 
are,  as  soon  as  they  see  it's  Fred  they're  all 
ready  to  have  a  laugh  with  him." 

Certainly  they  were,  as  any  hotel  clerk  with 
plastered  hair  is  ready  to  laugh  with  the  son  of 
a  multimillionaire.  It's  a  certain  sense  of  hu- 
mour that  they  develop. 

"But  for  us,  mother,"  said  the  Wizard, 
"we'll  be  rid  of  it.  The  gold  is  there.  It's  not 
right  to  keep  it  back.  But  we'll  just  find  a  way 
to  pass  it  on  to  folks  that  need  it  worse  than 
we  do." 

For  a  time  they  had  thought  of  giving  away 
the  fortune.  But  how?  Who  did  they  know 
that  would  take  it? 

It  had  crossed  their  minds — for"  who  could 
live  in  the  City  a  month  without  observing  the 
imposing  buildings  of  Plutoria  University,  as 
fine  as  any  departmental  store  in  town? — that 
they  might  give  it  to  the  college. 

71 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

But  there,  It  seemed,  the  way  was  blocked. 

"You  see,  mother,"  said  the  puzzled  Wizard, 
"we're  not  known.  We're  strangers.  I'd  look 
fine  going  up  there  to  the  college  and  saying,  *I 
want  to  give  you  people  a  million  dollars.' 
They'd  laugh  at  me !" 

"But  don't  one  read  it  in  the  papers,"  his 
wife  had  protested,  "where  Mr.  Carnegie  gives 
ever  so  much  to  the  colleges,  more  than  all 
we've  got,  and  they  take  it?" 

"That's  different,"  said  the  Wizard.  "He's 
in  with  them.  They  all  know  him.  Why,  he's 
a  sort  of  chairman  of  different  boards  of  col- 
leges, and  he  knows  all  the  heads  of  the  schools, 
and  the  professors,  so  it's  no  wonder  that  if  he 
offers  to  give  a  pension,  or  anything,  they  take 
it.  Just  think  of  me  going  up  to  one  of  the 
professors  up  there  in  the  middle  of  his  teach- 
ing and  saying,  'I'd  like  to  give  you  a  pension 
for  lifel'    Imagine  it!    Think  what  he'd  say  I" 

But  the  Tomlinsons  couldn't  imagine  it, 
which  was  just  as  well. 

So  it  came  about  that  they  had  embarked  on 
their  system.  Mother,  who  knew  most  arith- 
metic, was  the  leading  spirit.  She  tracked  out 
all  the  stocks  and  bonds  In  the  front  page  of  the 
Financial  Undertone,  and  on  her  recommenda- 
tion the  Wizard  bought.  They  knew  the  stocks 
only  by  their  letters,  but  this  itself  gave  a  touch 
of  high  finance  to  their  deliberations. 

73 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

"I'd  buy  some  of  this  R.  O.  P.  if  I  was  you," 
said  mother;  "it's  gone  down  from  127  to  107 
in  two  days,  and  I  reckon  it'll  be  all  gone  in  ten 
days  or  so." 

"Wouldn't  'G.  G.  deb.'  be  better?  It  goes 
down  quicker." 

"Well,  it's  a  quick  one,"  she  assented,  "but 
it  don't  go  down  so  steady.  You  can't  rely  on 
it.  You  take  ones  like  R.  O.  P.  and  T.  R.  R. 
pfd. ;  they  go  down  all  the  time  and  you  know 
where  you  are." 

As  a  result  of  which  Tomlinson  would  send 
his  instructions.  He  did  it  all  from  the  ro- 
tunda in  a  way  of  his  own  that  he  had  evolved 
with  a  telegraph  clerk  who  told  him  the  names 
of  brokers,  and  he  dealt  thus  through  brokers 
whom  he  never  saw.  As  a  result  of  this,  the 
sluggish  R.  O.  P.  and  T.  R.  R.  would  take  as 
sudden  a  leap  into  the  air  as  might  a  mule  with 
a  galvanic  shock  applied  to  its  tail.  At  once 
the  word  was  whispered  that  the  "Tomlinson 
interests"  were  after  the  R.  O.  P.  to  reorganise 
it,  and  the  whole  floor  of  the  Exchange  scram- 
bled for  the  stock. 

And  so  it  was  that  after  a  month  or  two  of 
these  operations  the  Wizard  of  Finance  saw 
himself  beaten. 

"It's  no  good,  mother,"  he  repeated,  "it's 
just  a  kind  of  Destiny." 

Destiny  perhaps  it  was. 
73 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

But,  if  the  Wizard  of  Finance  had  known  it, 
at  this  very  moment  when  he  sat  with  the  Alad- 
din's palace  of  his  golden  fortune  reared  so 
strangely  about  him,  Destiny  was  preparing  for 
him  still  stranger  things. 

Destiny,  so  it  would  seem,  was  devising  its 
own  ways  and  means  of  dealing  with  Tomlin- 
son's  fortune.  As  one  of  the  ways  and  means. 
Destiny  was  sending  at  this  moment  as  its  spe- 
cial emissaries  two  huge,  portly  figures,  wearing 
gigantic  goloshes,  and  striding  downwards  from 
the  halls  of  Plutoria  University  to  the  Grand 
Palaver  Hotel.  And  one  of  these  was  the  gi- 
gantic Dr.  Boomer,  the  president  of  the  col- 
lege, and  the  other  was  his  professor  of  Greek, 
almost  as  gigantic  as  himself.  And  they  carried 
in  their  capacious  pockets  bundles  of  pamphlets 
on  "Archaeological  Remains  of  Mitylene,"  and 
the  "Use  of  the  Greek  Pluperfect,"  and  little 
treatises  such  as  "Education  and  Philanthropy," 
by  Dr.  Boomer,  and  "The  Excavation  of  Mity- 
lene: An  Estimate  of  Cost,"  by  Dr.  Boyster, 
"Boomer  on  the  Foundation  and  Maintenance 
of  Chairs,"  etc. 

Many  a  man  in  city  finance  who  had  seen  Dr. 
Boomer  enter  his  office  with  a  bundle  of  these 
monographs  and  a  fighting  glitter  in  his  eyes 
had  sunk  back  in  his  chair  in  dismay.  For  it 
meant  that  Dr.  Boomer  had  tracked  him  out  for 

74 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

a  benefaction  to  the  University,  and  that  all 
resistance  was  hopeless. 

When  Dr.  Boomer  once  laid  upon  a  capital- 
ist's desk  his  famous  pamphlet  on  the  "Use  of 
the  Greek  Pluperfect,"  it  was  as  if  an  Arabfen 
sultan  had  sent  the  fatal  bow-string  to  a  con- 
demned pasha,  or  Morgan  the  buccaneer  had 
served  the  death-sign  on  a  shuddering  pirate. 

So  they  came  nearer  and  nearer,  shouldering 
the  passers-by.  The  sound  of  them  as  they 
talked  v/as  like  the  roaring  of  the  sea  as  Homer 
heard  it.  Never  did  Castor  and  Pollux  come 
surging  into  battle  as  Dr.  Boomer  and  Dr. 
Boyster  bore  down  upon  the  Grand  Palaver 
Hotel. 

Tomlinson,  the  Wizard  of  Finance,  had  hesi- 
tated about  going  to  the  university.  The  uni- 
versity was  coming  to  him.  As  for  those 
millions  of  his,  he  could  take  his  choice — dormi- 
tories, apparatus,  campuses,  buildings,  endow- 
ment, anything  he  liked — ^but  choose  he  must. 
And  if  he  feared  that  after  all  his  fortune  was 
too  vast  even  for  such  a  disposal.  Dr.  Boomer 
would  show  him  how  he  might  use  it  in  digging 
up  ancient  Mitylene,  or  modern  Smyrna,  or  the 
lost  cities  of  the  Plain  of  Pactolus.  If  the  size 
of  the  fortune  troubled  him  Dr.  Boomer  would 
dig  him  up  the  whole  African  Sahara  from 
Alexandria  to  Morocco,  and  ask  for  more. 

But  if  Destiny  held  all  this  for  Tomlinson  in 
75 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

its  outstretched  palm  before  it,  it  concealed 
stranger  things  still  beneath  the  folds  of  its 
toga. 

There  were  enough  surprises  there  to  turn 
the  faces  of  the  whole  directorate  of  the  Erie 
Auriferous  Consolidated  as  yellow  as  the  gold 
that  they  mined. 

For  at  this  very  moment,  while  the  president 
of  Plutoria  University  drew  nearer  and  nearer 
to  the  Grand  Palaver  Hotel,  the  senior  profes- 
sor of  geology  was  working  again  beside  the 
blue  flames  in  his  darkened  laboratory.  And 
this  time  there  was  no  shaking  excitement  over 
him.  Nor  were^  the  labels  that  he  marked,  as 
sample  followed  sample  in  the  tests,  the  same 
as  those  of  the  previous  marking.  Not  by  any 
means. 

And  his  grave  face  as  he  worked  in  silence 
was  as  still  as  the  stones  of  the  post-tertiary 
period. 


Chapter  III. — The  Arrested  Philanthropy 
of  Mr.  Tomlinson 

THIS,  Mr.  Tomlinson,  is  our  campus," 
said  President  Boomer  as  they 
passed  through  the  iron  gates  of 
Plutoria  University. 

"For  camping?"  said  the  Wizard. 

"Not  exactly,"  answered  the  president, 
"though  it  would,  of  course,  suit  for  that. 
Nihil  humanum  alienum,  eh?"  and  he  broke 
into  a  loud,  explosive  laugh,  while  his  spectacles 
irradiated  that  peculiar  form  of  glee  derived 
from  a  Latin  quotation  by  those  able  to  enjoy 
it.  Dr.  Boyster,  walking  on  the  other  side  of 
Mr.  Tomlinson,  joined  in  the  laugh  in  a  deep, 
reverberating  chorus. 

The  two  had  the  Wizard  of  Finance  be- 
tween them,  and  they  were  marching  him  up  to 
the  University.  He  was  taken  along  much  as 
is  an  arrested  man  who  has  promised  to  go 
quietly.  They  kept  their  hands  off  him,  but 
they  watched  him  sideways  through  their  spec- 
tacles. At  the  least  sign  of  restlessness  they 
doused  him  with  Latin.  The  Wizard  of  Fi- 
nance, having  been  marked  out  by  Dr.  Boomer 
and  Dr.  Boyster  as  a  prospective  benefactor, 

77 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

was  having  Latin  poured  over  him  to  reduce 
him  to  the  proper  degree  of  plasticity. 

They  had  already  put  him  through  the  first 
stage.  They  had,  three  d^ys  ago,  called  on 
him  at  the  Grand  Palaver  and  served  him  with 
a  pamphlet  on  "The  Excavation  of  Mitylene" 
as  a  sort  of  writ.  Tomlinson  and  his  wife  had 
looked  at  the  pictures  of  the  ruins,  and  from  the 
appearance  of  them  they  judged  that  Mitylene 
was  in  Mexico,  and  they  said  that  it  was  a 
shame  to  see  it  in  that  state  and  that  the  United 
States  ought  to  intervene. 

As  the  second  stage  on  the  path  of  philan- 
thropy, the  Wizard  of  Finance  was  now  being 
taken  to  look  at  the  university.  Dr.  Boomer 
knew  by  experience  that  no  rich  man  could  look 
at  it  without  wanting  to  give  it  money. 

And  here  the  president  had  found  that  there 
is  no  better  method  of  dealing  with  business 
men  than  to  use  Latin  on  them.  For  other  pur- 
poses the  president  used  other  things.  For 
example  at  a  friendly  dinner  at  the  Mausoleum 
Club  where  light  conversation  was  in  order, 
Dr.  Boomer  chatted,  as  has  been  seen,  on  the 
archaeological  remains  of  the  Navajos.  In  the 
same  way,  at  Mrs.  Rasselyer-Brown's  Dante 
luncheons,  he  generally  talked  of  the  Italian 
cinque centisti  and  whether  Gian  Gobbo  della 
Scala  had  left  a  greater  name  than  Can  Grande 
della  Spiggiola.    But  such  talk  as  that  was  nat- 

78 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

urally  only  for  women.  Business  men  are  much 
too  shrewd  for  that  kind  of  thing;  in-  fact,  so 
shrewd  are  they,  as  President  Boomer  had  long 
since  discovered,  that  nothing  pleases  them  so 
much  as  the  quiet,  firm  assumption  that  they 
know  Latin.  It  is  like  writing  them  up  an  asset. 
So  it  was  that  Dr.  Boomer  would  greet  a  busi- 
ness acquaintance  with  a  roaring  salutation  of, 
"Terque  quaterque  beatus',  or  stand  wringing 
his  hand  off  to  the  tune  of  "Oh  et  presidium  et 
dulce  decus  meum." 

This  caught  them  every  time. 

"You  don't,"  said  Tomlinson  the  Wizard  in 
a  hesitating  tone  as  he  looked  at  the  smooth 
grass  of  the  campus,  "I  suppose,  raise  anything 
on  it?" 

"No,  no;  this  is  only  for  field  sports,"  said 
the  president;  "sunt  quos  curriculo " 

To  which  Dr.  Boyster  on  the  other  side 
added,  like  a  chorus,  "  puherem  Olympicum." 

This  was  their  favourite  quotation.  It  al- 
ways gave  President  Boomer  a  chance  to  speak 
of  the  final  letter  "  m  "  in  Latin  poetry,  and 
to  say  that  in  his  opinion  the  so-called  elision  of 
the  final  "  m  "  was  more  properly  a  dropping 
of  the  vowel  with  a  repercussion  of  the  two 
last  consonants.  He  supported  this  by  quoting 
Ammianus,  at  which  Dr.  Boyster  exclaimed, 
"  Pooh  I  Ammianus :  more  dog  Latin !  "  and 
appealed  to  Mr.  Tomlinson  as  to  whether  any 

79 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

rational  man  nowadays  cared  what  Ammianus 
thought? 

To  all  of  which  Tomlinson  answered  never 
a  word,  but  looked  steadily  first  at  one  and 
then  at  the  other.  Dr.  Boomer  said  afterwards 
that  the  penetration  of  Tomlinson  was  won- 
derful, and  that  it  was  excellent  to  see  how 
Boyster  tried  in  vain  to  draw  him;  and  Boy- 
ster  said  afterwards  that  the  way  in  which 
Tomlinson  quietly  refused  to  be  led  on  by 
Boomer  was  delicious,  and  that  it  was  a  pity 
that  Aristophanes  was  not  there  to  do  it  justice. 

All  of  which  was  happening  as  they  went  in 
at  the  iron  gates  and  up  the  elm  avenue  of 
Plutoria  University. 

The  university,  as  everyone  knows,  stands 
with  its  great  gates  on  Plutoria  Avenue,  and 
with  its  largest  buildings,  those  of  the  facul- 
ties of  industrial  and  mechanical  science,  front- 
ing full  upon  the  street. 

These  buildings  are  exceptionally  fine,  stand- 
ing fifteen  stories  high  and  comparing  favour- 
ably with  the  best  departmental  stores  or  fac- 
tories in  the  City.  Indeed,  after  nightfall, 
when  they  are  all  lighted  up  for  the  evening 
technical  classes  and  when  their  testing  ma- 
chinery is  in  full  swing  and  there  are  students 
going  in  and  out  in  overall  suits,  people  have 
often  mistaken  the  university,  or  this  newer 
part  of  it,  for  a  factory.     A  foreign  visitor 

80 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

once  said  that  the  students  looked  like  plumb- 
ers, and  President  Boomer  was  so  proud  of 
it  that  he  put  the  phrase  into  his  next  Com- 
mencement address;  and  from  there  the  news- 
papers got  it  and  the  Associated  Press  took  it 
up  and  sent  it  all  over  the  United  States  with 
the  heading,  "  Have  Appearance  of  Plumbers; 
Plutoria  University  Congratulated  on  Char- 
acter of  Students,"  and  it  was  a  proud  day 
indeed  for  the  heads  of  the  Industrial  Science 
faculty. 

But  the  older  part  of  the  university  stands 
so  quietly  and  modestly  at  the  top  end  of  the 
elm  avenue,  so  hidden  by  the  leaves  of  it,  that 
no  one  could  mistake  it  for  a  factory.  This 
indeed  was  once  the  whole  university,  and  had 
stood  there  since  colonial  days  under  the  name 
Concordia  College.  It  had  been  filled  with 
generations  of  presidents  and  professors  of  the 
older  type  with  long  white  beards  and  rusty 
black  clothes,  and  salaries  of  fifteen  hundred 
dollars. 

But  the  change  both  of  name  and  of  char- 
acter from  Concordia  College  to  Plutoria  Uni- 
versity was  the  work  of  President  Boomer. 
He  had  changed  it  from  an  old-fashioned  col- 
lege of  the  by-gone  type  to  a  university  in  the 
true  modern  sense.  At  Plutoria  they  now 
taught  everything.  Concordia  College,  for 
example,  had  no  teaching  of  religion  except 

8i 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

lectures  on  the  Bible.  Now  they  had  lectures 
also  on  Confucianism,  Mohammedanism,  Bud- 
dhism, with  an  optional  course  on  atheism  for 
students  in  the  final  year. 

And,  of  course,  they  had  long  since  admitted 
women,  and  there  were  now  beautiful  creatures 
with  Cleo  de  Merode  hair  studying  astronomy 
at  oaken  desks  and  looking  up  at  the  teacher 
with  eyes  like  comets.  The  university  taught 
everything  and  did  everything.  It  had  whirl- 
ing machines  on  the  top  of  it  that  measured 
the  speed  of  the  wind,  and  deep  in  its  base- 
ments it  measured  earthquakes  with  a  seismo- 
graph; it  held  classes  on  forestry  and  dentistry 
and  palmistry;  it  sent  life  classes  into  the  slums, 
and  death  classes  to  the  city  morgue.  It  offered 
such  a  vast  variety  of  themes,  topics,  and  sub- 
jects to  the  students,  that  there  was  nothing 
that  a  student  was  compelled  to  learn,  while 
from  its  own  presses  in  its  own  press-building 
it  sent  out  a  shower  of  bulletins  and  mono- 
graphs like  driven  snow  from  a  rotary  plough. 

In  fact,  it  had  become,  as  President  Boomer 
told  all  the  business  men  in  town,  not  merely 
a  university,  but  a  universitas  in  the  true  sense, 
and  every  one  of  its  faculties  was  now  a  facultas 
in  the  real  acceptance  of  the  word,  and  its 
studies  properly  and  truly  studia;  indeed,  if  the 
business  men  would  only  build  a  few  more 
dormitories  and  put  up  enough  money  to  form 

82 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

an  adequate  fondatum  or  fundum  then  the  good 
work  might  be  looked  upon  as  complete. 

As  the  three  walked  up  the  elm  avenue  there 
met  them  a  little  stream  of  students  with  college 
books,  and  female  students  with  winged-victory 
hats,  and  professors  with  last  year's  overcoats. 
And  some  went  past  with  a  smile  and  others 
with  a  shiver. 

"That's  Professor  Withers,"  said  the  presi- 
dent in  a  sympathetic  voice  as  one  of  the  shiv- 
ering figures  went  past;  "poor  Withers,"  and 
he  sighed. 

"What's  wrong  with  him?"  said  the  Wiz- 
ard; "is  he  sick?" 

"No,  not  sick,"  said  the  president  quietly 
and  sadly,  "merely  inefficient." 

"Inefficient?" 

"Unfortunately  so.  Mind  you,  I  don't  mean 
'inefficient'  in  every  sense.  By  no  means.  If 
anyone  were  to  come  to  me  and  say,  'Boomer, 
can  you  put  your  hand  for  me  on  a  first-class 
botanist?'  I'd  say,  'Take  Withers.'  I'd  say 
it  in  a  minute." 

This  was  true.  He  would  have.  In  fact, 
if  anyone  had  made  this  kind  of  rash  speech. 
Dr.  Boomer  would  have  given  away  half  the 
professoriate. 

"Well,  what's  wrong  with  him?"  repeated 
Tomlinson.  "I  suppose  he  ain't  quite  up  to 
the  mark  in  some  ways,  eh?" 

83 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

"Precisely,"  said  the  president,  "not  quite 
up  to  the  mark — a  very  happy  way  of  putting 
it.  Capax  imperii  nisi  imperasset,  as  no  doubt 
you  are  thinking  to  yourself.  The  fact  is  that 
Withers,  though  an  excellent  fellow,  can't  man- 
age large  classes.  With  small  classes  he  is  all 
right,  but  with  large  classes  the  man  is  lost. 
He  can't  handle  them." 

"He  can't,  eh?"  said  the  Wizard. 

"No.  But  what  can  I  do?  There  he  is. 
I  can't  dismiss  him,  I  can't  pension  him.  I've 
no  money  for  it." 

Here  the  president  slackened  a  little  in  his 
walk  and  looked  sideways  at  the  prospective 
benefactor.     But  Tomlinson  gave  no  sign. 

A  second  professorial  figure  passed  them  on 
the  other  side. 

"There  again,"  said  the  president,  "that's 
another  case  of  Inefficiency — Professor  Shottat, 
our  senior  professor  of  English." 

"What's  wrong  with  him?"  asked  the 
Wizard. 

"He  can't  handle  small  classes,"  said  the 
president.  "With  large  classes  he  is  really 
excellent,  but  with  small  ones  the  man  is  simply 
hopeless." 

In  this  fashion,  before  Mr.  Tomlinson  had 
measured  the  length  of  the  avenue,  he  had  had 
ample  opportunity  to  judge  of  the  crying  need 
of  money  at  Plutoria  University,  and  of  the 

84 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

perplexity  of  its  president.  He  was  shown 
professors  who  could  handle  the  first  year,  but 
were  powerless  with  the  second;  others  who 
were  all  right  with  the  second  but  broke  down 
with  the  third,  while  others  could  handle  the 
third  but  collapsed  with  the  fourth.  There 
were  professors  who  were  all  right  in  their  own 
subject,  but  perfectly  impossible  outside  of  it; 
others  who  were  so  occupied  outside  of  their 
own  subject  that  they  were  useless  inside  of 
it;  others  who  knew  their  subject,  but  couldn't 
lecture;  and  others  again  who  lectured  admir- 
ably, but  didn't  know  their  subject. 

In  short  it  was  clear — as  it  was  meant  to 
be — that  the  need  of  the  moment  was  a  sum 
of  money  sufficient  to  enable  the  president  to 
dismiss  everybody  but  himself  and  Dr.  Boy- 
ster.  The  latter  stood  in  a  class  all  by  him- 
self. He  had  known  the  president  for  forty- 
five  years,  ever  since  he  was  a  fat  little  boy 
with  spectacles  in  a  classical  academy,  stuffing 
himself  on  irregular  Greek  verbs  as  readily 
as  if  on  oysters. 

But  it  soon  appeared  that  the  need  for  dis- 
missing the  professors  was  only  part  of  the 
trouble.    There  were  the  buildings  to  consider. 

"This,  I  am  ashamed  to  say,"  said  Dr. 
Boomer,  as  they  passed  the  imitation  Greek 
portico  of  the  old  Concordia  College  building, 

8s 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich  > 

"is  our  original  home,  the  fons  et  origo  of  our 
studies,  our  faculty  of  arts." 

It  was  indeed  a  dilapidated  building,  yet 
there  was  a  certain  majesty  about  it,  too,  espe- 
cially when  one  reflected  that  it  had  been  stand- 
ing there  looking  much  the  same  at  the  time 
when  its  students  had  trooped  off  in  a  flock  to 
join  the  army  of  the  Potomac,  and  much  the 
same  indeed  three  generations  before  that, 
when  the  classes  were  closed  and  the  students 
clapped  three-cornered  hats  on  their  heads  and 
were  off  to  enlist  as  minute  men  with  flintlock 
muskets  under  General  Washington. 

But  Dr.  Boomer's  one  idea  was  to  knock  the 
building  down  and  to  build  on  its  site  a  real 
facultas  ten  stories  high,  with  elevators  in  it. 

Tomlinson  looked  about  him  humbly  as  he 
stood  in  the  main  hall.  The  atmosphere  of  the 
place  awed  him.  There  were  bulletins  and 
time-tables  and  notices  stuck  on  the  walls  that 
gave  evidence  of  the  activity  of  the  place. 
"Professor  Slithers  will  be  unable  to  meet  his 
classes  to-day,"  ran  one  of  them,  and  another, 
"Professor  Withers  will  not  meet  his  classes 
this  week,"  and  another,  "Owing  to  illness. 
Professor  Shottat  will  not  lecture  this  month," 
while  still  another  announced,  "  Owing  to  the 
indisposition  of  Professor  Podge,  all  botanical 
classes  are  suspended,  but  Professor  Podge 
hopes  to  be  able  to  join  in  the  Botanical  Picnic 

86 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

Excursion  to  Loon  Lake  on  Saturday  after- 
noon." You  could  judge  of  the  grinding  rou- 
tine of  the  work  from  the  nature  of  these 
notices.  Anyone  familiar  with  the  work  of 
colleges  would  not  heed  it,  but  it  shocked  Tom- 
linson  to  think  how  often  the  professors  of  the 
college  were  stricken  down  by  overwork. 

Here  and  there  in  the  hall,  set  into  niches, 
were  bronze  busts  of  men  with  Roman  faces 
and  bare  necks,  and  the  edge  of  a  toga  cast 
over  each  shoulder. 

"Who  would  these  be?"  asked  Tomlinson, 
pointing  at  them. 

"Some  of  the  chief  founders  and  benefactors 
of  the  faculty,"  answered  the  president,  and 
at  this  the  hopes  of  Tomlinson  sank  in  his 
heart.  For  he  realised  the  class  of  man  one 
had  to  belong  to  in  order  to  be  accepted  as  a 
university  benefactor. 

"A  splendid  group  of  men,  are  they  not?" 
said  the  president.  "We  owe  them  much.  This 
is  the  late  Mr.  Hogworth,  a  man  of  singularly 
large  heart."  Here  he  pointed  to  a  bronze 
figure  wearing  a  wreath  of  laurel  and  inscribed 
"Gulielmus  Hogworth,  Litt.  Doc."  "He  had 
made  a  great  fortune  in  the  produce  business, 
and  wishing  to  mark  his  gratitude  to  the  com- 
munity, he  erected  the  anemometer,  the  wind- 
measure,  on  the  roof  of  the  building,  attaching 
fx)  it  no  other  condition  than  that  his  name 

87 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

should  be  printed  In  the  weekly  reports  Imme- 
diately beside  the  velocity  of  the  wind.  The 
figure  beside  him  Is  the  late  Mr.  Underbugg, 
who  founded  our  lectures  on  the  Four  Gospels 
on  the  sole  stipulation  that  henceforth  any  refer- 
ence of  ours  to  the  four  gospels  should  be 
coupled  with  his  name." 

"What's  that  after  his  name?"  asked  Tom- 
llnson. 

"LItt.  Doc.  ?"  said  the  president.  "Doctor 
of  Letters,  our  honorary  degree.  We  are  al- 
ways happy  to  grant  It  to  our  benefactors  by 
a  vote  of  the  faculty." 

Here  Dr.  Boomer  and  Dr.  Boyster  wheeled 
half  round  and  looked  quietly  and  steadily  at 
the  Wizard  of  Finance.  To  both  their  minds 
It  was  perfectly  plain  that  an  honourable  bar- 
gain was  being  struck. 

"Yes,  Mr.  Tomlinson,"  said  the  president, 
as  they  emerged  from  the  building,  "no  doubt 
you  begin  to  realise  our  unhappy  position. 
Money,  money,  money,"  he  repeated  half 
musingly.  "If  I  had  the  money  Fd  have  that 
whole  building  down  and  dismantled  In  a  fort- 
night." 

From  the  central  building  the  three  passed 
to  the  museum  building,  where  Tomlinson  was 
shown  a  vast  skeleton  of  a  Diplodocus  Maxl- 
mus,  and  was  specially  warned  not  to  confuse 
it  with  the  DInosaurus  Perfectus,  whose  bones, 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

however,  could  be  bought  if  anyone,  any  man 
of  large  heart,  would  come  to  the  university 
and  say  straight  out,  "Gentlemen,  what  can  I 
do  for  you?"  Better  still,  it  appeared  the 
whole  museum,  which  was  hopelessly  anti- 
quated, being  twenty-five  years  old,  could  be 
entirely  knocked  down  if  a  sufficient  sum  was 
forthcoming;  and  its  curator,  who  was  as 
ancient  as  the  Dinosaurus  itself,  could  be  dis- 
missed on  half-pay  if  any  man  had  a  heart  large 
enough  for  the  dismissal. 

From  the  museum  they  passed  to  the  library, 
where  there  were  full-length  portraits  of  more 
founders  and  benefactors  in  long  red  robes, 
holding  scrolls  of  paper,  and  others  sitting  hold- 
ing pens  and  writing  on  parchment,  with  a 
Greek  temple  and  a  thunderstorm  in  the  back- 
ground. 

And  here  again  it  appeared  that  the  crying 
need  of  the  moment  was  for  someone  to  come 
to  the  university  and  say,  "Gentlemen,  what 
can  I  do  for  you?"  On  which  the  whole  li- 
brary, for  it  was  twenty  years  old  and  out  of 
date,  might  be  blown  up  with  dynamite  and 
carted  away. 

But  at  all  this  the  hopes  of  Tomlinson  sank 
lower  and  lower.  The  red  robes  and  the  scrolls 
were  too  much  for  him. 

From  the  library  they  passed  to  the  tall  build- 
ings that  housed  the  faculty  of  industrial  and 

89 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

mechanical  science.  And  here  again  the  same 
pitiful  lack  of  money  was  everywhere  appar- 
ent. For  example,  in  the  physical  science  de- 
partment there  was  a  mass  of  apparatus  for 
which  the  university  was  unable  to  afford  suit- 
able premises,  and  in  the  chemical  department 
there  were  vast  premises  for  which  the  uni- 
versity was  unable  to  buy  apparatus,  and  so  on. 
Indeed,  it  was  part  of  Dr.  Boomer's  method  to 
get  himself  endowed  first  with  premises  too  big 
for  the  apparatus,  and  then  by  appeahng  to 
public  spirit  to  call  for  enough  apparatus  to 
more  than  fill  the  premises,  by  means  of  which 
system  industrial  science  at  Plutoria  University 
advanced  with  increasing  and  gigantic  strides. 

But  most  of  all  the  electric  department  inter- 
ested the  Wizard  of  Finance.  And  this  time 
his  voice  lost  its  hesitating  tone  and  he  looked 
straight  at  Dr.  Boomer  as  he  began, 

"I  have  a  boy " 

"Ah!"  said  Dr.  Boomer,  with  a  huge  ejacu- 
lation oi  surprise  and  relief;  "you  have  a  boy  I" 

There  were  volumes  in  his  tone.  What  it 
meant  was,  "  Now,  indeed,  we  have  got  you 
where  we  want  you,"  and  he  exchanged  a  mean- 
ing look  with  the  professor  of  Greek. 

Within  five  minutes  the  president  and  Tom- 
linson  and  Dr.  Boyster  were  gravely  discuss- 
ing on  what  terms  and  in  what  way  Fred  might 
be  admitted  to  study  in  the  faculty  of  indus- 

5» 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

trial  science.  The  president,  on  learning  that 
Fred  had  put  in  four  years  in  Cahoga  County 
Section  No.  3  School,  and  had  been  head  of 
his  class  in  ciphering,  nodded  his  head  gravely 
and  said  it  would  simply  be  a  matter  of  a 
pro  tanto;  that,  in  fact,  he  felt  sure  that  Fred 
might  be  admitted  ad  eundem.  But  the  real 
condition  on  which  they  meant  to  admit  him 
was,  of  course,  not  mentioned. 

One  door  only  in  the  faculty  of  industrial 
and  mechanical  science  they  did  not  pass,  a 
heavy  oak  door  at  the  end  of  a  corridor  bear- 
ing the  painted  inscription,  "Geological  and 
Metallurgical  Laboratories."  Stuck  in  the 
door  was  a  card  with  the  words  (they  were  con- 
ceived in  the  courteous  phrases  of  mechanical 
science,  which  is  almost  a  branch  of  business 
in  the  real  sense),  "Busy — keep  out." 

Dr.  Boomer  looked  at  the  card.  "Ah,  yes," 
he  said,  "Gildas  is  no  doubt  busy  with  his  tests. 
We  won't  disturb  him."  The  president  was 
always  proud  to  find  a  professor  busy;  It  looked 
well. 

But  if  Dr.  Boomer  had  known  what  was 
going  on  behind  the  oaken  door  of  the  Depart- 
ment of  Geology  and  Metallurgy,  he  would 
have  felt  considerably  disturbed  himself. 

For  here  again  Gildas,  senior  professor  of 
geology,  was  working  among  his  blue  flames  at 
a  final  test  on  which  depended  the  fate  of  the 

9x 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

Erie  Auriferous  Consolidated  and  all  connected 
with  it. 

Before  him  there  were  some  twenty  or  thirty 
packets  of  crumpled  dust  and  splintered  ore 
that  glittered  on  the  testing  table.  It  had  been 
taken  up  from  the  creek  along  its  whole  length, 
at  even  spaces  twenty  yards  apart,  by  an  expert 
sent  down  in  haste  by  the  directorate,  after 
Gildas's  second  report,  and  heavily  bribed  to 
keep  his  mouth  shut. 

And  as  Professor  Gildas  stood  and  worked 
at  the  samples  and  tied  them  up  after  analysis 
in  little  white  cardboard  boxes,  he  marked  each 
one  very  carefully  and  neatly  with  the  words, 
"Pyrites:  worthless." 

Beside  the  professor  worked  a  young  demon- 
strator of  last  year's  graduation  class.  It  was 
he,  in  fact,  who  had  written  the  polite  notice 
on  the  card. 

"What  is  the  stuff,  anyway?"  he  asked. 

"A  sulphuret  of  iron,"  said  the  professor, 
"or  iron  pyrites.  In  colour  and  appearance 
it  Is  practically  identical  with  gold.  Indeed, 
in  all  ages,"  he  went  on,  dropping  at  once  into 
the  class-room  tone  and  adopting  the  profes- 
sorial habit  of  jumping  backwards  twenty  cen- 
turies in  order  to  explain  anything  properly, 
"it  has  been  readily  mistaken  for  the  precious 
metal.  The  ancients  called  it  'fool's  gold.* 
Martin  Frobisher  brought  back  four  shiploads 

92 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

of  it  from  Baffin  Land  thinking  that  he  had 
discovered  an  Eldorado.  There  are  large  de- 
posits of  it  in  the  mines  of  Cornwall,  and  it 
is  just  possible,"  here  the  professor  measured 
his  words  as  if  speaking  of  something  that  he 
wouldn't  promise,  "that  the  Cassiterides  of  the 
Phcenicians  contained  deposits  of  the  same  sul- 
phuret.  Indeed,  I  defy  anyone,"  he  continued, 
for  he  was  piqued  in  his  scientific  pride,  "to 
distinguish  it  from  gold  without  a  laboratory 
test.  In  large  quantities,  I  concede,  its  lack  of 
weight  would  betray  it  to  a  trained  hand,  but 
without  testing  its  solubility  in  nitric  acid,  or  the 
fact  of  its  burning  with  a  blue  flame  under  the 
blow-pipe,  it  cannot  be  detected.  In  short,  when 
crystallised  in  dodecahedrons " 

"Is  it  any  good?"  broke  in  the  demonstrator. 

"Good?"  said  the  professor.  "Oh,  you 
mean  commercially?  Not  in  the  slightest. 
Much  less  valuable  than,  let  us  say,  ordinary 
mud  or  clay.  In  fact,  it  is  absolutely  good 
for  nothing." 

They  were  silent  for  a  moment,  watching  the 
blue  flames  above  the  brazier. 

Then  Gildas  spoke  again.  "Oddly  enough," 
he  said,  "the  first  set  of  samples  were  undoubt- 
edly pure  gold — not  the  faintest  doubt  of  that. 
That  is  the  really  interesting  part  of  the  mat- 
ter. These  gentlemen  concerned  in  the  enter- 
prise will,  of  course,  lose  their  money,  and  I 

93 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

shall  therefore  decline  to  accept  the  very  hand- 
some fee  which  they  had  offered  me  for  my 
services.  But  the  main  feature,  the  real  point 
of  interest  in  this  matter  remains.  Here  we 
have  undoubtedly  a  sporadic  deposit, — what 
miners  call  a  pocket, — of  pure  gold  in  a  De- 
vonian formation  of  the  post-tertiary  period. 
This  once  established,  we  must  revise  our  en- 
tire theory  of  the  distribution  of  igneous  and 
aqueous  rocks.  In  fact,  I  am  already  getting 
notes  together  for  a  paper  for  the  Pan-Geo- 
logical under  the  heading,  'Auriferous  Excre- 
tions in  the  Devonian  Strata:  a  Working  Hy- 
pothesis.' I  hope  to  read  it  at  the  next 
meeting." 

The  young  demonstrator  looked  at  the  pro- 
fessor with  one  eye  half  closed. 

"I  don't  think  I  would  if  I  were  you,"  he 
said. 

Now  this  young  demonstrator  knew  nothing, 
or  practically  nothing,  of  geology,  because  he 
came  of  one  of  the  richest  and  best  families 
in  town  and  didn't  need  to.  But  he  was  a  smart 
young  man,  dressed  in  the  latest  fashion,  with 
brown  boots  and  a  crosswise  tie,  and  he  knew 
more  about  money  and  business  and  the  stock 
exchange  in  five  minutes  than  Professor  Gildas 
in  his  whole  existence. 

"Why  not?"  said  the  professor. 

"Why,  don't  you  see  what's  happened?'* 
94 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

"Ehr'saldGIldas. 

"What  happened  to  those  first  samples? 
When  that  bunch  got  Interested  and  planned  to 
float  the  company?  Don't  you  see?  Somebody 
salted  them  on  you." 

"Salted  them  on  me?"  repeated  the  pro- 
fessor, mystified. 

"Yes,  salted  them.  Somebody  got  wise  to 
what  they  were  and  swopped  them  on  you  for 
the  real  thing,  so  as  to  get  your  certified  re- 
port that  the  stuff  was  gold." 

"I  begin  to  see,"  muttered  the  professor. 
"Somebody  exchanged  the  samples,  some  per- 
son no  doubt  desirous  of  establishing  the  theory 
that  a  sporadic  outcropping  of  the  sort  might 
be  found  in  a  post-tertiary  formation.  I  see, 
I  see.  No  doubt  he  intended  to  prepare  a 
paper  on  it,  and  prove  his  thesis  by  these  tests. 
I  see  it  all!" 

The  demonstrator  looked  at  the  professor 
with  a  sort  of  pity. 

"You're  on  I"  he  said,  and  he  laughed  softly 
to  himself. 

•  •  •  •  • 

"Well,"  said  Dr.  Boomer,  after  Tomllnson 
had  left  the  university,  "what  do  you  make 
of  him?"  The  president  had  taken  Dr.  Boy- 
ster  over  to  his  house  beside  the  campus,  and 
there  In  his  study  had  given  him  a  cigar  as  big 
as  a  rope  and  taken  another  himself.     This 

95 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

was  a  sign  that  Dr.  Boomer  wanted  Dr.  Boy- 
ster's  opinion  in  plain  English,  without  any 
Latin  about  it. 

"Remarkable  man,"  said  the  professor  of 
Greek;  "wonderful  penetration,  and  a  man  of 
very  few  words.  Of  course  his  game  is  clear 
enough?" 

"Entirely  so,"  asserted  Dr.  Boomer. 

"It's  clear  enough  that  he  means  to  give  the 
money  on  two  conditions." 

"Exactly,"  said  the  president. 

"First  that  w".  admit  his  son,  who  is  quite 
unqualified,  to  the  senior  studies  in  electrical 
science,  and  second  that  we  grant  him  the  de- 
gree of  Doctor  of  Letters.  Those  are  his 
terms." 

"Can  we  meet  them?" 

"Oh,  certainly.  As  to  the  son,  there  is  no 
difficulty,  of  course;  as  to  the  degree,  it's  only 
a  question  of  getting  the  faculty  to  vote  it. 
I  think  we  can  manage  it." 

Vote  it  they  did  that  very  afternoon.  True, 
if  the  members  of  the  faculty  had  known  the 
things  that  were  being  whispered,  and  more 
than  whispered,  in  the  City  about  Tomllnson 
and  his  fortune,  no  degree  would  ever  have 
been  conferred  on  him.  But  it  so  happened 
that  at  that  moment  the  whole  professoriate 
was  absorbed  in  one  of  those  great  educational 
crises  which  from  time  to  time  shake  a  univer- 

96 


Arcadian  Adventures  with,  the  Idle  Rich 

sity  to  Its  base.  The  meeting  of  the  faculty 
that  day  bid  fair  to  lose  all  vestige  of  decorum 
in  the  excitement  of  the  moment.  For,  as  Dean 
Elderberry  Foible,  the  head  of  the  faculty, 
said,  the  motion  that  they  had  before  them 
amounted  practically  to  a  revolution.  The  pro- 
posal was  nothing  less  than  the  permission  of 
the  use  of  lead-pencils  instead  of  pen  and  ink 
in  the  sessional  examinations  of  the  university. 
Anyone  conversant  with  the  inner  life  of  a 
college  will  realise  that  to  many  of  the  pro- 
fessoriate this  was  nothing  less  than  a  last 
wild  onslaught  of  socialistic  democracy  against 
the  solid  bulwarks  of  society.  They  must  fight 
it  back  or  die  on  the  walls.  To  others  it  was 
one  more  step  in  the  splendid  progress  of  demo- 
cratic education,  comparable  only  to  such  epoch- 
making  things  as  the  abandonment  of  the  cap 
and  gown,  and  the  omission  of  the  word  "sir" 
in  speaking  to  a  professor. 

No  wonder  that  the  fight  raged.  Elderberry 
Foible,  his  fluffed  white  hair  almost  on  end,  beat 
in  vain  with  his  gavel  for  order.  Finally, 
Chang  of  Physiology,  who  was  a  perfect  dyna- 
mo of  energy  and  was  known  frequently  to 
work  for  three  or  four  hours  at  a  stretch,  pro- 
posed that  the  faculty  should  adjourn  the  ques- 
tion and  meet  for  its  further  discussion  on 
the  following  Saturday  morning.  This  revolu- 
tionary suggestion,  involving  work  on  Saturday, 

97 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

reduced  the  meeting  to  a  mere  turmoil,  in  the 
midst  of  which  Elderberry  Foible  proposed  that 
the  whole  question  of  the  use  of  lead-pencils 
should  be  adjourned  till  that  day  six  months, 
and  that  meantime  a  new  special  committee  of 
seventeen  professors,  with  power  to  add  to  their 
number,  to  call  witnesses  and,  if  need  be,  to 
hear  them,  should  report  on  the  entire  matter 
de  novo.  This  motion,  after  the  striking  out 
of  the  words  de  novo  and  the '  insertion  of 
ab  initio,  was  finally  carried,  after  which  the 
faculty  sank  back  completely  exhausted  into 
its  chair,  the  need  of  afternoon  tea  and  toast 
stamped  on  every  face. 

And  it  was  at  this  moment  that  President 
Boomer,  who  understood  faculties  as  few  men 
have  done,  quietly  entered  the  room,  laid  his 
silk  hat  on  a  volume  of  Demosthenes,  and  pro- 
posed the  vote  of  a  degree  of  Doctor  of  Letters 
for  Edward  Tomlinson.  He  said  that  there 
was  no  need  to  remind  the  faculty  of  Tom- 
linson's  services  to  the  nation ;  they  knew  them. 
Of  the  members  of  the  faculty,  indeed,  some 
thought  that  he  meant  the  Tomlinson  who  wrote 
the  famous  monologue  on  the  Iota  Subscript, 
while  others  supposed  that  he  referred  to  the 
celebrated  philosopher  Tomlinson,  whose  new 
book  on  the  Indivisibility  of  the  Inseparable 
was  just  then  maddening  the  entire  world.     In 

98 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

any  case,  they  voted  the  degree  without  a  word, 
still  faint  with  exhaustion. 

•  •  -         •  •  • 

But  while  the  university  was  conferring  on 
Tomlinson  the  degree  of  Doctor  of  Letters,  all 
over  the  City  in  business  circles  they  were  con- 
ferring on  him  far  other  titles.  "  Idiot," 
"Scoundrel,"  "Swindler,"  were  the  least  of 
them.  Every  stock  and  share  with  which  his 
name  was  known  to  be  connected  was  coming 
down  with  a  run,  wiping  out  the  accumulated 
profits  of  the  Wizard  at  the  rate  of  a  thousand 
dollars  a  minute. 

They  not  only  questioned  his  honesty,  but 
they  went  further  and  questioned  his  business 
capacity. 

"The  man,"  said  Mr.  Lucullus  Fyshe,  sit- 
ting in  the  Mausoleum  Club  and  breathing 
freely  at  last  after  having  disposed  of  all  his 
holdings  in  the  Erie  Auriferous,  "is  an  ignora- 
mus. I  asked  him  only  the  other  day,  quite 
casually,  a  perfectly  simple  business  question. 
I  said  to  him.  'T.C.  Bonds  have  risen  twenty- 
two  and  a  half  in  a  week.  You  know  and  I 
know  that  they  are  only  collateral  trust,  and 
that  the  stock  underneath  never  could  and  never 
would  earn  a  par  dividend.  Now,'  I  said,  for 
I  wanted  to  test  the  fellow,  'tell  me  what  that 
means?'     Would  you  believe  me,  he  looked 

99 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

me  right  in  the  face  in  that  stupid  way  of  his, 
and  he  said,  'I  don't  know  I'  " 

"He  said  he  didn't  know!"  repeated  the 
listener  contemptuously;  "the  man  is  a  damn 
fool!" 

•  •  «  •  • 

The  reason  of  all  this  was  that  the  results 
of  the  researches  of  the  professor  of  geology 
were  being  whispered  among  the  directorate  of 
the  Erie  Auriferous.  And  the  directors  and 
chief  shareholders  were  busily  performing  the 
interesting  process  called  unloading.  Nor  did 
ever  a  farmer  of  Cahoga  County  in  haying 
time,  with  a  thunderstorm  threatening,  unload 
with  greater  rapidity  than  did  the  major  share- 
holders of  the  Auriferous.  Mr.  Lucullus  Fyshe 
traded  off  a  quarter  of  his  stock  to  an  unwary 
member  of  the  Mausoleum  Club  at  a  drop  of 
thirty  per  cent.,  and  being  too  prudent  to  hold 
the  rest  on  any  terms  he  conveyed  it  at  once 
as  a  benefaction  in  trust  to  the  Plutorian  Or- 
phans' and  Foundlings'  Home;  while  the  pur- 
chaser of  Mr.  Fyshe's  stock,  learning  too  late 
of  his  folly,  rushed  for  his  lawyers  to  have 
the  shares  conveyed  as  a  gift  to  the  Home  for 
Incurables. 

Mr.  Asmodeus  Boulder  transferred  his  en- 
tire holdings  to  the  Imbeciles'  Relief  Society, 
and  Mr.  Furlong,  senior,  passed  his  over  to  a 
Chinese  mission  as  fast  as  pen  could  traverse 
paper. 

xeo 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

Down  at  the  office  of  Skinyer  and  Beatem, 
the  lawyers  of  the  company,  they  were  work- 
ing overtime  drawing  up  deeds  and  conveyances 
and  trusts  in  perpetuity,  with  hardly  time  to 
put  them  into  typewriting.  Within  twenty-four 
hours  the  entire  stock  of  the  company  bid  fair 
to  be  in  the  hands  of  Idiots,  Orphans,  Protest- 
ants, Foundlings,  Imbeciles,  Missionaries,  Chin- 
ese, and  other  unfinancial  people,  with  Tom- 
linson  the  Wizard  of  Finance  as  the  senior 
shareholder  and  majority  control.  And 
whether  the  gentle  Wizard,  as  he  sat  with 
mother  planning  his  vast  benefaction  to  Plu- 
toria  University,  would  have  felt  more  at  home 
with  his  new  group  of  fellow-shareholders  than 
his  old,  it  were  hard  indeed  to  say. 

But  meantime  at  the  office  of  Skinyer  and 
Beatem  all  was  activity.  For  not  only  were 
they  drafting  the  conveyances  of  the  perpetual 
trusts  as  fast  as  legal  brains  working  overtime 
could  do  it,  but  in  another  part  of  the  office 
a  section  of  the  firm  were  busily  making  their 
preparations  against  the  expected  actions  for 
fraud  and  warrants  of  distraint  and  injunctions 
against  disposal  of  assets  and  the  whole  battery 
of  artillery  which  might  open  on  them  at  any 
moment.  And  they  worked  like  a  corps  of 
military  engineers  fortifying  an  escarpment, 
with  the  joy  of  battle  in  their  faces. 

The   storm   might  break   at   any   moment. 

lOI 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

Already  at  the  office  of  the  Financial  Undertone 
the  type  was  set  for  a  special  extra  with  a  head- 
ing three  inches  high: 

COLLAPSE 
OF  THE  ERIE  CONSOLIDATED 

ARREST  OF  THE   MAN  TOMLINSON 
EXPECTED  THIS  AFTERNOON 

Skinyer  and  Beatem  had  paid  the  editor,  who 
was  crooked,  two  thousand  dollars  cash  to  hold 
back  that  extra  for  twenty-four  hours;  and  the 
editor  had  paid  the  reporting  staff,  who  were 
crooked,  twenty-five  dollars  each  to  keep  the 
news  quiet,  and  the  compositors,  who  were  also 
crooked,  ten  dollars  per  man  to  hold  their 
mouths  shut  till  the  morning,  with  tRe  result 
that  from  editors  and  sub-editors  and  reporters 
and  compositors  the  news  went  seething  forth 
in  a  flood  that  the  Erie  Auriferous  Consolidated 
was  going  to  shatter  into  fragments  like  the 
bursting  of  a  dynamite  bomb.  It  rushed  with 
a  thousand  whispering  tongues  from  street  to 
street,  till  it  filled  the  corridors  of  the  law- 
courts  and  the  lobbies  of  the  offices,  and  till 
every  honest  man  that  held  a  share  of  the  stock 
shivered  in  his  tracks  and  reached  out  to  give, 
sell,  or  destroy  it.  Only  the  unwinking  Idiots, 
and  the  mild  Orphans,   and  the  calm   Deaf- 

I02 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

mutes,  and  the  impassive  Chinese  held  tight  to 
what  they  had.  So  gathered  the  storm,  till  all 
the  town,  like  the  great  rotunda  of  the  Grand 
Palaver,  was  filled  with  a  silent  "call  for  Mr. 
Tomlinson,"  voiceless  and  ominous. 

And  while  all  this  was  happening,  and  while 
at  Skinyer  and  Beatem's  they  worked  with 
frantic  pens  and  clattering  type,  there  came  a 
knock  at  the  door,  hesitant  and  uncertain,  and 
before  the  eyes  of  the  astounded  office  there 
stood  in  his  wide-awake  hat  and  long  black 
coat  the  figure  of  *  the  man  Tomlinson '  him- 
self. 

And  Skinyer,  the  senior  partner,  no  sooner 
heard  what  Tomlinson  wanted  than  he  dashed 
across  the  outer  office  to  his  partner's  room  with 
his  hyena  face  all  excitement  as  he  said: 

"Beatem,  Beatem,  come  over  to  my  room. 
This  man  is  absolutely  the  biggest  thing  in 
America.  For  sheer  calmness  and  nerve  I  never 
heard  of  anything  to  approach  him.  What  do 
you  think  he  wants  to  do?" 

"What?"  said  Beatem. 

"Why,  he's  giving  his  entire  fortune  to  the 
university." 

"By  Gad  I"  ejaculated  Beatem,  and  the  two 
lawyers  looked  at  one  another,  lost  in  admira- 
tion of  the  marvellous  genius  and  assurance 
of  Tomlinson. 


ice 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

Yet  what  had  happened  was  very  simple. 

Tomlinson  had  come  back  from  the  univer- 
sity filled  with  mingled  hope  and  hesitation. 
The  university,  he  saw,  needed  the  money, 
and  he  hoped  to  give  it  his  entire  fortune,  to 
put  Dr,  Boomer  in  a  position  to  practically  de- 
stroy the  whole  place.  But,  like  many  a  mod- 
est man,  he  lacked  the  assurance  to  speak  out. 
He  felt  that  up  to  the  present  the  benefactors 
of  the  university  had  been  men  of  an  entirely 
different  class  from  himself. 

It  was  mother  who  solved  the  situation  for 
him. 

"Well,  father,"  she  said,  "there's  one  thing 
I've  learned  already  since  we've  had  money.  If 
you  want  to  get  a  thing  done  you  can  always 
find  people  to  do  It  for  you  if  you  pay  them. 
Why  not  go  to  those  lawyers  that  manage 
things  for  the  company  and  get  them  to  arrange 
it  all  for  you  with  the  college?" 

As  a  result,  Tomlinson  had  turned  up  at  the 
door  of  the  Skinyer  and  Beatem  office. 

"Quite  so,  Mr.  Tomlinson,"  said  Skinyer, 
with  his  pen  already  dipped  in  the  ink,  "a  per- 
fectly simple  matter.  I  can  draw  up  a  draft  of 
conveyance  with  a  few  strokes  of  the  pen.  In 
fact,  we  can  do  It  on  the  spot." 

What  he  meant  was,  "In  fact,  we  can  do  it 
so  fast  that  I  can  pocket  a  fee  of  five  hundred 

104 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

dollars  right  here  and  now  while  you  have  the 
money  to  pay  me." 

"Now  then,"  he  continued,  "let  us  see  how 
it  is  to  run." 

"Well,"  said  Tomlinson,  "I  want  you  to 
put  it  that  I  give  all  my  stock  in  the  company 
to  the  university." 

"All  of  it?"  said  Skinyer,  with  a  quiet  smile 
to  Beatem. 

"Every  cent  of  it,  sir,"  said  Tomlinson; 
"just  write  down  that  I  give  all  of  it  to  the 
college." 

"Very  good,"  said  Skinyer,  and  he  began 
to  write,  "I,  so-and-so,  and  so-and-so,  of  the 
county  of  so-and-so — Cahoga,  I  think  you  said, 
Mr.  Tomlinson?" 

"Yes,  sir,"  said  the  Wizard,  "I  was  raised 
there." 

"  — do  hereby  give,  assign,  devise,  transfer, 
and  the  transfer  is  hereby  given,  devised  and 
assigned,  all  those  stocks,  shares,  hereditaments, 
etc.,  which  I  hold  in  the  etc.,  etc.,  all,  several 
and  whatever — you  will  observe,  Mr.  Tomlin- 
son, I  am  expressing  myself  with  as  great  brev- 
ity as  possible — to  that  institution,  academy, 
college,  school,  university,  now  known  and  re- 
puted to  be  Plutoria  University,  of  the  city 
of  etc.,  etc'  " 

He  paused  a  moment.  "Now  what  special 
objects  or  purposes  shall  I  indicate?  "  he  asked. 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

Whereupon  Tomlinson  explained  as  best  he 
could,  and  Skinyer,  working  with  great  rapidity, 
indicated  that  the  benefaction  was  to  include 
a  Demolition  Fund  for  the  removal  of  build- 
ings, a  Retirement  Fund  for  the  removal  of 
professors,  an  Apparatus  Fund  for  the  destruc- 
tion of  apparatus,  and  a  General  Sinking  Fund 
for  the  obliteration  of  anything  not  otherwise 
mentioned. 

"And  I'd  like  to  do  something,  if  I  could, 
for  Mr.  Boomer  himself,  just  as  man  to  man," 
said  Tomlinson. 

"All  right,"  said  Beatem,  and  he  could 
hardly  keep  his  face  straight.  "Give  him  a 
chunk  of  the  stock — give  him  half  a  million." 

"I  will,"  said  Tomlinson;  "he  deserves  it." 

"Undoubtedly,"  said  Mr.  Skinyer. 

And  within  a  few  minutes  the  whole  tran- 
saction was  done,  and  Tomlinson,  filled  with 
joy,  was  wringing  the  hands  of  Skinyer  and 
Beatem,  and  telling  them  to  name  their  own 
fee. 

They  had  meant  to,  anyway. 

•  «  .  •  • 

"Is  that  legal,  do  you  suppose?"  said 
Beatem  to  Skinyer,  after  the  Wizard  had  gone. 
"Will  it  hold  water?" 

"Oh,  I  don't  think  so,"  said  Skinyer,  "not 
for  a  minute.  In  fact,  rather  the  other  way. 
If  they  make  an  arrest  for  fraudulent  flota- 

106 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

tion,  this  conveyance,  I  should  think,  would 
help  to  send  him  to  the  penitentiary.  But  I 
very  much  doubt  if  they  can  arrest  him.  Mind 
you,  the  fellow  is  devilish  shrewd.  You  know, 
and  I  know,  that  he  planned  this  whole  flota- 
tion with  a  full  knowledge  of  the  fraud.  You 
and  /  know  it — very  good — but  we  know  it 
more  from  our  trained  instinct  in  such  things 
than  by  any  proof.  The  fellow  has  managed 
to  surround  himself  with  such  an  air  of  good 
faith  from  start  to  finish  that  it  will  be  deuced 
hard  to  get  at  him."  ^ 

"What  will  he  do  now?"  said  Beatem. 

"I  tell  you  what  he'll  do.  Mark  my  words. 
Within  twenty-four  hours  he'll  clear  out  and 
be  out  of  the  state,  and  if  they  want  to  get 
him  they'll  have  to  extradite.  I  tell  you  he's 
a  man  of  extraordinary  capacity.  The  rest  of 
us  are  nowhere  beside  him." 

In  which,  perhaps,  there  was  some  truth. 

"Well,  mother,"  said  the  Wizard,  when  he 
reached  the  thousand-dollar  suite,  after  his 
interview  with  Skinyer  and  Beatem,  his  face 
irradiated  with  simple  joy,  "it's  done.  I've 
put  the  college  now  in  a  position  it  never  was 
in  before,  nor  any  other  college;  the  lawyers 
say  so  themselves." 

"That's  good,"  said  mother. 

"Yes,  and  it's  a  good  thing  I  didn't  lose  the 
107 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

money  when  I  tried  to.  You  see,  mother,  what 
I  hadn't  realised  was  the  good  that  could  be 
done  with  all  that  money  if  a  man  put  his  heart 
into  it.  They  can  start  in  as  soon  as  they  like 
and  tear  down  those  buildings.  My!  but  it's 
just  wonderful  what  you  can  do  with  money. 
I'm  glad  I  didn't  lose  it." 

So  they  talked  far  into  the  evening.  That 
night  they  slept  in  an  Aladdin's  palace  filled 
with  golden  fancies. 

And  in  the  morning  the  palace  and  all  its 
visions  fell  tumbling  about  their  heads  in  sud- 
den and  awful  catastrophe.  For  with  Tomlin- 
son's  first  descent  to  the  rotunda  it  broke.  The 
whole  great  space  seemed  filled  with  the  bulle- 
tins and  the  broadside  sheets  of  the  morning 
papers,  the  crowd  surging  to  and  fro  buying 
the  papers,  men  reading  them  as  they  stood, 
and  everywhere  in  great  letters  there  met  his 
eye: 

COLLAPSE 

OF  THE  ERIE  AURIFEROUS 

THE  GREAT  GOLD  SWINDLE 

ARREST  OF  THE  MAN  TOMLINSON 

EXPECTED  THIS  MORNING 

So  stood  the  Wizard  of  Finance  beside  a 
pillar,  the  paper  fluttering  in  his  hand,  his  eyes 

io8 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

fixed,  while  about  him  a  thousand  eager  eyes 
and  rushing  tongues  sent  shame  into  his  stricken 
heart. 

And  there  his  boy  Fred,  sent  from  upstairs, 
found  him;  and  at  the  sight  of  the  seething 
crowd  and  his  father's  stricken  face,  aged  as 
it  seemed  all  in  a  moment,  the  boy's  soul  woke 
within  him.  What  had  happened  he  could 
not  tell,  only  that  his  father  stood  there,  dazed, 
beaten,  and  staring  at  him  on  every  side  in 
giant  letters: 

ARREST  OF  THE  MAN  TOMLINSON 

"Come,  father,  come  upstairs,"  he  said,  and 
took  him  by  the  arm,  dragging  him  through 
the  crowd. 

In  the  next  half-hour  as  they  sat  and  waited 
for  the  arrest  in  the  false  grandeur  of  the  thou- 
sand-dollar suite, — Tomlinson,  his  wife,  and 
Fred, — the  boy  learnt  more  than  all  the  teach- 
ing of  the  industrial  faculty  of  Plutoria  Uni- 
versity could  have  taught  him  in  a  decade.  Ad- 
versity laid  its  hand  upon  him,  and  at  its  touch 
his  adolescent  heart  turned  to  finer  stuff  than 
the  salted  gold  of  the  Erie  Auriferous.  As 
he  looked  upon  his  father's  broken  figure  wait- 
ing meekly  for  arrest,  and  his  mother's  blub- 
bered face,  a  great  wrath  burned  itself  into  his 
soul. 

MP 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

"When  the  sheriff  comes "  said  Tomlin- 

son,  and  his  lip  trembled  as  he  spoke.  He  had 
no  other  picture  of  arrest  than  that. 

"They  can't  arrest  you,  father,"  broke  out 
the  boy.  "  You've  done  nothing.  You  never 
swindled  them.    I  tell  you,  if  they  try  to  arrest 

you,  I'll "  and  his  voice  broke  and  stopped 

upon  a  sob,  and  his  hands  clenched  in  passion. 

"You  stay  here,  you  and  mother.  I'll  go 
down.  Give  me  your  money  and  I'll  go  and 
pay  them  and  we'll  get  out  of  this  and  go  home. 
They  can't  stop  us;  there's  nothing  to  arrest 
you  for." 

Nor  was  there.  Fred  paid  the  bill  unmo- 
lested, save  for  the  prying  eyes  and  babbling 
tongues  of  the  rotunda. 

And  a  few  hours  from  that,  while  the  town 
was  still  ringing  with  news  of  his  downfall,  the 
Wizard  with  his  wife  and  son  walked  down 
from  their  thousand-dollar  suite  into  the  cor- 
ridor, their  hands  burdened  with  their  satchels. 
A  waiter,  with  something  between  a  sneer  and 
an  obsequious  smile  upon  his  face,  reached  out 
for  the  valises,  wondering  if  it  was  still  worth 
while. 

"You  get  to  hell  out  of  that  I"  said  Fred. 
He  had  put  on  again  his  rough  store  suit  in 
which  he  had  come  from  Cahoga  County,  and 
there   was   a    dangerous   look   about   his   big 

no 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

shoulders  and  his  set  jaw.     And  the  waiter 
slunk  back. 

So  did  they  pass,  unarrested  and  unhindered, 
through  corridor  and  rotunda  to  the  outer  por- 
tals of  the  great  hotel. 

Beside  the  door  of  the  Palaver  as  they  passed 
out  was  a  tall  official  with  a  uniform  and  a 
round  hat.  He  was  called  by  the  authorities  a 
chasseur  or  a  commissionaire,  or  some  foreign 
name  to  mean  that  he  did  nothing. 

At  the  sight  of  him  the  Wizard's  face  flushed 
for  a  moment,  with  a  look  of  his  old  perplexity. 

"I  wonder,"  he  began  to  murmur,  "how 
much  I  ought " 

"Not  a  damn  cent,  father,"  said  Fred,  as 
he  shouldered  past  the  magnificent  chasseur; 
"let  him  work." 

With  which  admirable  doctrine  the  Wizard 
and  his  son  passed  from  the  portals  of  the 
Grand  Palaver. 

•  •  •  •  • 

Nor  was  there  any  arrest  either  then  or  later. 
In  spite  of  the  expectations  of  the  rotunda  and 
the  announcements  of  the  Financial  Undertone, 
the  "man  Tomlinson  "  was  not  arrested,  neither 
as  he  left  the  Grand  Palaver  nor  as  he  stood 
waiting  at  the  railroad  station  with  Fred  and 
mother  for  the  outgoing  train  for  Cahoga 
County. 

There  was  nothing  to  arrest  him  for.    That 
III 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

was  not  the  least  strange  part  of  the  career  of 
the  Wizard  of  Finance.  For  when  all  the 
affairs  of  the  Erie  Auriferous  Consolidated 
were  presently  calculated  up  by  the  labours  of 
Skinyer  and  Beatem  and  the  legal  representa- 
tives of  the  Orphans  and  the  Idiots  and  the 
Deaf-mutes,  they  resolved  themselves  into  the 
most  beautiful  and  complete  cipher  conceiv- 
able. The  salted  gold  about^paid  for  the  cost 
of  the  incorporation  certificate:  the  develop- 
ment capital  had  disappeared,  and  those  who 
lost  most  preferred  to  say  the  least  about  it; 
and  as  for  Tomlinson,  if  one  added  up  his  gains 
on  the  stock  market  before  the  fall  and  sub- 
tracted his  bill  at  the  Grand  Palaver  and  the 
thousand  dollars  which  he  gave  to  Skinyer  and 
Beatem  to  recover  his  freehold  on  the  lower 
half  of  his  farm,  and  the  cost  of  three  tickets 
to  Cahoga  station,  the  debit  and  credit  account 
balanced  to  a  hair. 

Thus  did  the  whole  fortune  of  Tomlinson 
vanish  in  a  night,  even  as  the  golden  palace 
seen  in  the  mirage  of  a  desert  sunset  may  fade 
before  the  eyes  of  the  beholder,  and  leave  no 
trace  behind. 

•  •  •  •  • 

It  was  some  months  after  the  collapse  of  the 
Erie  Auriferous  that  the  university  conferred 
upon  Tomlinson  the  degree  of  Doctor  of  Let- 
ters in  absentia.     A  university  must  keep  its 

112 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

word,  and  Dean  Elderberry  Foible,  who  was 
honesty  itself,  had  stubbornly  maintained  that 
a  vote  of  the  faculty  of  arts  once  taken  and 
written  in  the  minute  book  became  as  irrefrag- 
able as  the  Devonian  rock  itself. 

So  the  degree  was  conferred.  And  Dean 
Elderberry  Foible,  standing  in  a  long  red  gown 
before  Dr.  Boomer,  seated  in  a  long  blue  gown, 
read  out  after  the  ancient  custom  of  the  college 
the  Latin  statement  of  the  award  of  the  degree 
of  Doctor  of  Letters,  "Eduardus  Tomlinsonius, 
vir  clarissimus,  doctissimus,  praestissimus,"  and 
a  great  many  other  things  all  ending  in  issimus. 

But  the  recipient  was  not  there  to  receive. 
He  stood  at  that  moment  with  his  boy  Fred 
on  a  windy  hill-side  beside  Lake  Erie,  where 
Tomlinson's  Creek  ran  again  untrammelled  to 
the  lake.  Nor  was  the  scene  altered  to  the 
eye,  for  Tomlinson  and  his  son  had  long  since 
broken  a  hole  in  the  dam  with  pickaxe  and 
crowbar,  and  day  by  day  the  angry  water  car- 
'  ried  down  the  vestiges  of  the  embankment  till 
all  were  gone.  The  cedar  poles  of  the  electric 
lights  had  been  cut  into  fence-rails ;  the  wooden 
shanties  of  the  Italian  gang  of  Auriferous 
workers  had  been  torn  down  and  split  into  fire- 
wood; and  where  they  had  stood,  the  burdocks 
and  the  thistles  of  the  luxuriant  summer  con- 
spired to  hide  the  traces  of  their  shame.  Nature 

"3 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

reached  out  its  hand  and  drew  its  coverlet  of 
green  over  the  grave  of  the  vanished  Eldorado. 
And  as  the  Wizard  and  his  son  stood  upon 
the  hill-side,  they  saw  nothing  but  the  land 
sloping  to  the  lake  and  the  creek  murmuring 
again  to  the  willows,  while  the  off-shore  wind 
rippled  the  rushes  of  the  shallow  water. 


1x4 


Chapter    IV. — The     Yahi-Bahi     Oriental 
Society  of  Mrs.  Rasselyer-Brown 

MRS.   RASSELYER-BROWN  lived 
t>n  Plutoria  Avenue   In  a   vast 
sandstone  palace,  in  which  she 
held  those  fashionable  entertain- 
ments which  have  made  the  name  of  Rasselyer- 
Brown  what  it  is.     Mr.  Rasselyer-Brown  lived 
there  also. 

The  exterior  of  the  house  was  more  or  less 
a  model  of  the  facade  of  an  Italian  palazzo  of 
the  sixteenth  century.  If  one  questioned  Mrs. 
Rasselyer-Brown  at  dinner  in  regard  to  this 
(which  was  only  a  fair  return  for  drinking 
five-dollar  champagne)  she  answered  that  the 
fagade  was  cinquecentisti,  but  that  it  reproduced 
also  the  Saracenic  mullioned  window  of  the 
Siennese  School.  But  if  the  guest  said  later  in 
the  evening  to  Mr.  Rasselyer-Brown  that  he 
understood  that  his  house  was  cinquecentisti, 
he  answered  that  he  guessed  it  was.  After 
which  remark  and  an  interval  of  silence  Mr. 
Rasselyer-Brown  would  probably  ask  the  guest 
if  he  was  dry. 

So  fro^  that  one  can  tell  exactly  the  sort  of 
people  the  Rasselyer-Browns  were. 

ii5 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

In  other  words,  Mr.  Rasselyer-Brown  was 
a  severe  handicap  to  Mrs.  Rasselyer-Brown. 
He  was  more  than  that;  the  word  isn't  strong 
enough.  He  was,  as  Mrs.  Rasselyer-Brown 
herself  confessed  to  her  confidential  circle  of 
three  hundred  friends,  a  drag.  He  was  also 
a  tie,  and  a  weight,  and  a  burden,  and  in  Mrs. 
Rasselyer-Brown's  religious  moments  a  cruci- 
fix. Even  in  the  early  years  of  their  married 
life,  some  twenty  or  twenty-five  years  ago,  her 
husband  had  been  a  drag  on  her  by  being  in 
the  coal  and  wood  business.  It  is  hard  for 
a  woman  to  have  to  realise  that  her  husband 
is  making  a  fortune  out  of  coal  and  wood  and 
that  people  know  it.  It  ties  one  down.  What 
a  woman  wants  most  of  all — this,  of  course,  is 
merely  a  quotation  from  Mrs.  Rasselyer- 
Brown's  own  thoughts  as  expressed  to  her  three 
hundred  friends — is  room  to  expand,  to  grow. 
The  hardest  thing  in  the  word  is  to  be  stifled: 
and  there  is  nothing  more  stifling  than  a  hus- 
band who  doesn't  know  a  Giotto  from  a  Carlo 
Dolci,  but  who  can  distinguish  nut  coal  from 
egg  and  is  never  asked  to  dinner  without  talking 
about  the  furnace. 

These,  of  course,  were  early  trials.  They 
had  passed  to  some  extent,  or  were,  at  any 
rate,  garlanded  with  the  roses  of  time. 

But  the  drag  remained. 

Even  when  the  retail  coal  and  wood  stage 
ii6 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

was  long  since  over,  it  was  hard  to  have  to 
put  up  with  a  husband  who  owned  a  coal  mine 
and  who  bought  pulp  forests  instead  of  illumi- 
nated missals  of  the  twelfth  century.  A  coal 
mine  is  a  dreadful  thing  at  a  dinner-table.  It 
humbles  one  so  before  one's  guests. 

It  wouldn't  have  been  so  bad — this  Mrs. 
Rasselyer-Brown  herself  admitted — if  Mr. 
Rasselyer-Brown  did  anything.  This  phrase 
should  be  clearly  understood.  It  meant  if  there 
was  any  one  thing  that  he  did.  For  instance 
if  he  had  only  collected  anything.  Thus,  there 
was  Mr.  Lucullus  Fyshe,  who  made  soda-water, 
but  at  the  same  time  everybody  knew  that  he 
had  the  best  collection  of  broken  Italian  furni- 
ture on  the  continent;  there  wasn't  a  sound 
piece  among  the  lot. 

And  there  was  the  similar  example  of  old 
Mr.  Feathertop.  He  didn't  exactly  collect 
things ;  he  repudiated  the  name.  He  was  wont 
to  say,  "Don't  call  me  a  collector,  I'm  not.  I 
simply  pick  things  up.  Just  where  I  happen 
to  be,  Rome,  Warsaw,  Bucharest,  anywhere" 
— and  it  is  to  be  noted  what  fine  places  these 
are  to  happen  to  be.  And  to  think  that  Mr. 
Rasselyer-Brown  would  never  put  his  foot  out- 
side of  the  United  States!  Whereas  Mr. 
Feathertop  would  come  back  from  what  he 
called  a  run  to  Europe,  and  everybody  would 
learn  in  a  week  that  he  had  picked  up  the  back 

"7 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

of  a  violin  in  Dresden  (actually  discovered  it 
in  a  violin  shop),  and  the  lid  of  an  Etruscan 
kettle  (he  had  lighted  on  it,  by  pure  chance,  in 
a  kettle  shop  in  Etruria),  and  Mrs.  Rasselyer- 
Brown  would  feel  faint  with  despair  at  the 
nonentity  of  her  husband. 

So  one  can  understand  how  heavy  her  bur- 
den was. 

"My  dear,"  she  often  said  to  her  bosom 
friend,  Miss  Snagg,  "I  shouldn't  mind  things 
so  much"  (the  things  she  wouldn't  mind  were, 
let  us  say,  the  two  million  dollars  of  standing 
timber  which  Brown  Limited,  the  ominous 
business  name  of  Mr.  Rasselyer-Brown,  were 
buying  that  year)  "if  Mr.  Rasselyer-Brown 
did  anything.  But  he  does  nothing.  Every 
morning  after  breakfast  off  to  his  wretched 
office,  and  never  back  till  dinner,  and  in  the 
evening  nothing  but  his  club,  or  some  business 
meeting.  One  would  think  he  would  have  more 
ambition.     How  I  wish  I  had  been  a  man." 

It  was  certainly  a  shame. 

So  it  came  that,  in  almost  everything  she 
undertook  Mrs.  Rasselyer-Brown  had  to  act 
without  the  least  help  from  her  husband. 
Every  Wednesday,  for  instance,  when  the 
Dante  Club  met  at  her  house  (they  selected 
four  lines  each  week  to  meditate  on,  and  then 
discussed  them  at  lunch),  Mrs.  Rasselyer- 
Brown  had  to  carry  the  whole  burden  of  it— • 

ii8 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

her  very  phrase,  "  the  whole  burden  " — alone. 
Anyone  who  has  carried  four  lines  of  Dante 
through  a  Moselle  lunch  knows  what  a  weight 
it  is. 

In  all  these  things  her  husband  was  useless, 
quite  useless.  It  is  not  right  to  be  ashamed  of 
one's  husband.  And  to  do  her  justice,  Mrs. 
Rasselyer-Brown  always  explained  to  her  three 
hundred  intimates  that  she  was  not  ashamed 
of  him ;  in  fact,  that  she  refused  to  be.  But  it 
was  hard  to  see  him  brought  into  comparison 
at  their  own  table  with  superior  men.  Put  him, 
for  instance,  beside  Mr.  Sikleigh  Snoop,  the 
sex-poet,  and  where  was  he?  Nowhere.  He 
couldn't  even  understand  what  Mr.  Snoop  was 
saying.  And  when  Mr.  Snoop  would  stand  on 
the  hearth-rug  with  a  cup  of  tea  balanced  in 
his  hand,  and  discuss  whether  sex  was  or  was 
not  the  dominant  note  in  Botticelli,  Mr.  Rassel- 
yer-Brown would  be  skulking  in  a  corner  in  his 
ill-fitting  dress-suit.  His  wife  would  often  catch 
with  an  agonised  ear  such  scraps  of  talk  as, 
"When  I  was  first  in  the  coal  and  wood  busi- 
ness," or,  "It's  a  coal  that  burns  quicker  than 
egg,  but  it  hasn't  the  heating  power  of  nut," 
or  even  in  a  low  undertone  the  words,   "If 

you're    feeling   dry   while   he's    reading '* 

And  this  at  a  time  when  everybody  in  the  room 
ought  to  have  been  listening  to  Mr.  Snoop. 

Nor  was  even  this  the  whole  burden  of  Mr*' 
119 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

Rasselyer-Brown.  There  was  another  part  of 
it  which  was  perhaps  more  real,  though  Mrs. 
Rasselyer-Brown  herself  never  put  it  into 
words.  In  fact,  of  this  part  of  her  burden  she 
never  spoke,  even  to  her  bosom  friend  Miss 
Snagg;  nor  did  she  talk  about  it  to  the  ladies 
of  the  Dante  Club,  nor  did  she  make  speeches 
on  it  to  the  members  of  the  Women's  After- 
noon Art  Society,  nor  to  the  Monday  Bridge 
Club. 

But  the  members  of  the  Bridge  Club  and  the 
Art  Society  and  the  Dante  Club  all  talked  about 
it  among  themselves. 

Stated  very  simply,  it  was  this :  Mr.  Rassel- 
yer-Brown drank. 

It  was  not  meant  that  he  was  a  drunkard  or 
that  he  drank  too  much,  or  anything  of  that 
sort.    He  drank.    That  was  all. 

There  was  no  excess  about  it.  Mr.  Rassel- 
yer-Brown, of  course,  began  the  day  with  an 
eye-opener — and  after  all,  what  alert  man  does 
not  wish  his  eyes  well  open  in  the  morning? 
He  followed  it  usually  just  before  breakfast 
with  a  bracer — and  what  wiser  precaution  can 
a  business  man  take  than  to  brace  his  break- 
fast? On  his  way  to  business  he  generally  had 
his  motor  stopped  at  the  Grand  Palaver  for  a 
moment,  if  it  was  a  raw  day,  and  dropped  in 
and  took  something  to  keep  out  the  damp.  If 
it  was  a  cold  day  he  took  something  to  keep 

120 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

out  the  cold,  and  if  it  was  one  of  those  clear, 
sunny  days  that  are  so  dangerous  to  the  sys- 
tem he  took  whatever  the  bar-tender  (a  recog- 
nised health  expert)  suggested  to  tone  the  sys- 
tem up.  After  which  he  could  sit  down  in  his 
office  and  transact  more  business,  and  bigger 
business,  in  coal,  charcoal,  wood,  pulp,  pulp- 
wood,  and  wood-pulp,  in  two  hours  than  any 
other  man  in  the  business  could  in  a  week.  Nat- 
urally so.  For  he  was  braced,  and  propped, 
and  toned  up,  and  his  eyes  had  been  opened, 
and  his  brain  cleared,  till  outside  of  very  big 
business  indeed  few  men  were  on  a  footing 
with  him. 

In  fact,  it  was  business  itself  which  had  com- 
pelled Mr.  Rasselyer-Brown  to  drink.  It  is  all 
very  well  for  a  junior  clerk  on  twenty  dollars  a 
week  to  do  his  work  on  sandwiches  and  malted 
milk.  In  big  business  it  is  not  possible.  When 
a  man  begins  to  rise  in  business,  as  Mr.  Rassel- 
yer-Brown had  begun  twenty-five  years  ago, 
he  finds  that  if  he  wants  to  succeed  he  must 
cut  malted  milk  clear  out.  In  any  position  of 
responsibility  a  man  has  got  to  drink.  No 
really  big  deal  can  be  put  through  without  it. 
If  two  keen  men,  sharp  as  flint,  get  together 
to  make  a  deal  in  which  each  intends  to  outdo 
the  other,  the  only  way  to  succeed  is  for  them 
to  adjourn  to  some  such  place  as  the  luncheon- 
room  of  the  Mausoleum  Club  and  both  get 

121 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

partially  drunk.  This  is  what  is  called  the  per- 
sonal element  in  business.  And,  beside  it, 
plodding  industry  is  nowhere. 

Most  of  all  do  these  principles  hold  true  In 
such  manly  out-of-door  enterprises  as  the  forest 
and  timber  business,  where  one  deals  constantly 
with  chief  rangers,  and  pathfinders,  and  wood- 
stalkers,  whose  very  names  seem  to  suggest  a 
horn  of  whiskey  under  a  hemlock-tree. 

But, — let  it  be  repeated  and  carefully  under- 
stood,— there  was  no  excess  about  Mr.  Rassel- 
yer-Brown^s  drinking.  Indeed,  whatever  he 
might  be  compelled  to  take  during  the  day, 
and  at  the  Mausoleum  Club  in  the  evening,  after 
his  return  from  his  club  at  night  Mr.  Rasselyer- 
Brown  made  it  a  fixed  rule  to  take  nothing. 
He  might,  perhaps,  as  he  passed  into  the  house, 
step  into  the  dining-room  and  take  a  very  small 
drink  at  the  sideboard.  But  this  he  counted 
as  part  of  the  return  itself,  and  not  after  it. 
And  he  might,  if  his  brain  were  over-fatigued, 
drop  down  later  in  the  night  in  his  pajamas  and 
dressing-gown  when  the  house  was  quiet,  and 
compose  his  mind  with  a  brandy  and  water,  or 
something  suitable  to  the  stillness  of  the  hour. 
But  this  was  not  really  a  drink.  Mr.  Rassel- 
yer-Brown  called  It  a  nip;  and  of  course  any 
man  may  need  a  nip  at  a  time  when  he  would 
scorn  a  drink. 


S2I 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

But  after  all,  a  woman  may  find  herself 
again  in  her  daughter.  There,  at  least,  is  con- 
solation. For,  as  Mrs.  Rasselyer-Brown  her- 
self admitted,  her  daughter  Dulphemia  was 
herself  again.  There  were,  of  course,  differ- 
ences, certain  differences  of  face  and  appear- 
ance. Mr.  Snoop  had  expressed  this  fact  ex- 
quisitely when  he  said  that  it  was  the  differ- 
ence between  a  Burne-Jones  and  a  Dante  Ga- 
briel Rossetti.  But  even  at  that  the  mother 
and  daughter  were  so  alike  that  people,  cer- 
tain people,  were  constantly  mistaking  them  on 
the  street.  And  as  everybody  that  mistook 
them  was  apt  to  be  asked  to  dine  on  five-dollar 
champagne  there  was  plenty  of  temptation 
towards  error. 

There  is  no  doubt  that  Dulphemia  Rassel- 
yer-Brown was  a  girl  of  remarkable  character 
and  intellect.  So  is  any  girl  who  has  beautiful 
golden  hair  parted  in  thick  bands  on  her  fore- 
head, and  deep  blue  eyes  soft  as  an  Italian  sky. 

Even  the  oldest  and  most  serious  men  in 
town  admitted  that  in  talking  to  her  they  were 
aware  of  a  grasp,  a  reach,  a  depth  that  sur- 
prised them.  Thus  old  Judge  Longerstill,  who 
talked  to  her  at  dinner  for  an  hour  on  the 
jurisdiction  of  the  Interstate  Commerce  Com- 
mission, felt  sure  from  the  way  in  which  she 
looked  up  in  his  face  at  Intervals  and  said, 
"How  interesting!"   that  she  had  the  mind 

123 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

of  a  lawyer.  And  Mr.  Brace,  the  consulting^ 
engineer,  who  showed  her  on  the  table-cloth 
at  dessert  with  three  forks  and  a  spoon  the 
method  in  which  the  overflow  of  the  spillway 
of  the  Gatun  Dam  Is  regulated,  felt  assured, 
from  the  way  she  leaned  her  face  on  her  hand 
sideways  and  said,  "How  extraordinary!"  that 
she  had  the  brain  of  an  engineer.  Similarly 
foreign  visitors  to  the  social  circles  of  the  city 
were  delighted  with  her.  Viscount  FitzThistle, 
who  explained  to  Dulphemia  for  half  an  hour 
the  Intricacies  of  the  Irish  situation,  was  cap- 
tivated at  the  quick  grasp  she  showed  by  ask- 
ing him  at  the  end,  without  a  second's  hesita- 
tion, "And  which  are  the  Nationalists?" 

This  kind  of  thing  represents  female  intel- 
lect In  its  best  form.  Every  man  that  is  really 
a  man  is  willing  to  recognise  it  at  once. 

As  to  the  young  men,  of  course  they  flocked 
to  the  Rasselyer-Brown  residence  in  shoals. 
There  were  batches  of  them  every  Sunday  aft- 
ernoon at  five  o'clock,  encased  in  long  black 
frockcoats,  sitting  very  rigidly  in  upright  chairs, 
trying  to  drink  tea  with  one  hand.  One  might 
see  athletic  young  college  men  of  the  football 
team  trying  hard  to  talk  about  Italian  music; 
and  Italian  tenors  from  the  Grand  Opera  doing 
their  best  to  talk  about  college  football.  There 
were  young  men  in  business  talking  about  art, 
and  young  men  in  art  talking  about  religion, 

124 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

and  young  clergymen  talking  about  business. 
Because,  of  course,  the  Rasselyer-Brown  resi- 
dence was  the  kind  of  cultivated  home  where 
people  of  education  and  taste  are  at  liberty  to 
talk  about  things  they  don't  know,  and  to  utter 
freely  ideas  that  they  haven't  got.  It  was  only 
now  and  again,  when  one  of  the  professors 
from  the  college  across  the  avenue  came  boom- 
ing into  the  room,  that  the  whole  conversation 
was  pulverised  into  dust  under  the  hammer  of 
accurate  knowledge. 

This  whole  process  was  what  was  called,  by 
those  who  understood  such  things,  a  salon. 
Many  people  said  that  Mrs.  Rasselyer-Brown's 
afternoons  at  home  were  exactly  like  the  de- 
lightful salons  of  the  eighteenth  century:  and 
whether  the  gatherings  were  or  were  not  salons 
of  the  eighteenth  century,  there  is  no  doubt 
that  Mr.  Rasselyer-Brown,  under  whose  care 
certain  favoured  guests  dropped  quietly  into 
the  back  alcove  of  the  dining-room,  did  his  best 
to  put  the  gathering  on  a  par  with  the  best 
saloons  of  the  twentieth. 

Now  it  so  happened  that  there  had  come  a 
singularly  slack  moment  in  the  social  life  of 
the  City.  The  Grand  Opera  had  sung  itself 
Into  a  huge  deficit  and  closed.  There  remained 
nothing  of  It  except  the  efforts  of  a  committee 
of  ladies  to  raise  enough  money  to  enable  Sig- 
ner Puffi  to  leave  town,  and  the  generous  at- 

125 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

tempt  of  another  committee  to  gather  funds 
in  order  to  keep  Signor  Pasti  in  the  City.  Be- 
yond this,  opera  was  dead,  though  the  fact 
that  the  deficit  was  nearly  twice  as  large  as  it 
had  been  the  year  before  showed  that  public 
interest  in  music  was  increasing.  It  was  indeed 
a  singularly  trying  time  of  the  year.  It  was 
too  early  to  go  to  Europe,  and  too  late  to  go 
to  Bermuda.  It  was  too  warm  to  go  south,  and 
yet  still  too  cold  to  go  north.  In  fact,  one  was 
almost  compelled  to  stay  at  home — which  was 
dreadful. 

As  a  result  Mrs.  Rasselyer-Brown  and  her 
three  hundred  friends  moved  backward  and 
forward  on  Plutoria  Avenue,  seeking  novelty 
in  vain.  They  washed  in  waves  of  silk  from 
tango  teas  to  bridge  afternoons.  They  poured 
in  liquid  avalanches  of  colour  into  crowded  re- 
ceptions, and  they  sat  in  glittering  rows  and 
listened  to  lectures  on  the  enfranchisement  of 
the  female  sex.  But  for  the  moment  all  was 
weariness. 

Now  it  happened,  whether  by  accident  or 
design,  that  just  at  this  moment  of  general 
ennui  Mrs.  Rasselyer-Brown  and  her  three 
hundred  friends  first  heard  of  the  presence  in 
the  city  of  Mr.  Yahi-Bahi,  the  celebrated  Ori- 
ental mystic.  He  was  so  celebrated  that  no- 
body even  thought  of  asking  who  he  was  or 
where  he  came  from.    They  merely  told  one 

126 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

another,  and  repeated  it,  that  he  was  the  cele- 
brated Yahi-Bahi.  They  added  for  those  who 
needed  the  knowledge  that  the  name  was  pro- 
nounced Yahhy-Bahhy,  and  that  the  doctrine 
taught  by  Mr.  Yahi-Bahi  was  Boohooism.  This 
latter,  if  anyone  inquired  further,  was  explained 
to  be  a  form  of  Shoodooism,  only  rather  more 
intense.  In  fact,  it  was  esoteric — on  receipt 
of  which  information  everybody  remarked  at 
once  how  infinitely  superior  the  Oriental  peoples 
are  to  ourselves. 

Now  as  Mrs.  Rasselyer-Brown  was  always 
a  leader  in  everything  that  was  done  in  the  best 
circles  on  Plutoria  Avenue,  she  was  naturally 
among  the  first  to  visit  Mr.  Yahi-Bahi. 

"My  dear,"  she  said,  in  describing  after- 
wards her  experience  to  her  bosom  friend.  Miss 
Snagg,  *'  it  was  most  interesting.  We  drove 
away  down  to  the  queerest  part  of  the  City, 
and  went  to  the  strangest  little  house  imagin- 
able, up  the  narrowest  stairs  one  ever  saw — 
quite  Eastern,  in  fact,  just  like  a  scene  out  of 
the  Koran." 

"How  fascinating  I"  said  Miss  Snagg.  But 
as  a  matter  of  fact,  if  Mr.  Yahi-Bahi's  house 
had  been  inhabited,  as  it  might  have  been,  by 
a  street-car  conductor  or  a  railway  brakesman, 
Mrs.  Rasselyer-Brown  wouldn't  have  thought 
it  in  any  way  peculiar  or  fascinating. 

"It  was  all  hung  with  curtains  inside,"  she 
127 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

went  on,  "with  figures  of  snakes  and  Indian 
gods,  perfectly  weird." 

"And  did  you  see  Mr.  Yahi-Bahi?"  asked 
Miss  Snagg. 

"Oh  no,  my  dear.  I  only  saw  his  assistant, 
Mr.  Ram  Spudd;  such  a  queer  little  round  man, 
a  Bengalee,  I  believe.  He  put  his  back  against 
a  curtain  and  spread  out  his  arms  sideways  and 
wouldn't  let  me  pass.  He  said  that  Mr.  Yahi- 
Bahi  was  in  meditation  and  musn't  be  dis- 
turbed." 

"How  delightful!"  echoed  Miss  Snagg. 

But  in  reality  Mr.  Yahi-Bahi  was  sitting  be- 
hind the  curtain  eating  a  ten-cent  can  of  pork 
and  beans. 

"What  I  like  most  about  eastern  people," 
went  on  Mrs.  Rasselyer-Brown,  "is  their  won- 
derful delicacy  of  feeling.  After  I  had  ex- 
plained about  my  invitation  to  Mr.  Yahi-Bahi 
to  come  and  speak  to  us  on  Boohooism,  and  was 
going  away,  I  took  a  dollar  bill  out  of  my 
purse  and  laid  it  on  the  table.  You  should 
have  seen  the  way  Mr.  Ram  Spudd  took  it. 
He  made  the  deepest  salaam  and  said,  'Isis 
guard  you,  beautiful  lady.'  Such  perfect  cour- 
tesy, and  yet  with  the  air  of  scorning  the  money. 
As  I  passed  out  I  couldn't  help  slipping  an- 
other dollar  into  his  hand,  and  he  took  it  as 
if  utterly  unaware  of  it,  and  muttered,  'Osiris 
keep  you,  O  flower  of  women!'     And  as  I 

128 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

got  into  the  motor  I  gave  him  another  dollar 
and  he  said,  'Osis  and  Osiris  both  prolong 
your  existence,  O  lily  of  the  rice-field';  and 
after  he  had  said  it  he  stood  beside  the  door 
of  the  motor  and  waited  without  moving  till 
I  left.  He  had  such  a  strange,  rapt  look,  as 
if  he  were  still  expecting  something!" 

"How  exquisite!"  murmured  Miss  Snagg. 
It  was  her  business  in  life  to  murmur  such 
things  as  this  for  Mrs.  Rasselyer-Brown.  On 
the  whole,  reckoning  Grand  Opera  tickets  and 
dinners,  she  did  very  well  out  of  it. 

"Is  it  .not?"  said  Mrs.  Rasselyer-Brown. 
"So  different  from  our  men.  I  felt  so  ashamed 
of  my  chauffeur,  our  new  man,  you  know;  he 
seemed  such  a  contrast  beside  Ram  Spudd.  The 
rude  way  in  which  he  opened  the  door,  and  the 
rude  way  in  which  he  climbed  on  to  his  own 
seat,  and  the  rudeness  with  'which  he  turned 
on  the  power — I  felt  positively  ashamed.  .And 
he  so  managed  it — I  am  sure  he  did  it  on  pur- 
pose— that  the  car  splashed  a  lot  of  mud  over 
Mr.  Spudd  as  it  started." 

Yet,  oddly  enough,  the  opinion  of  other  peo- 
ple on  this  new  chauffeur,  that  of  Miss  Dul- 
phemia  Rasselyer-Brown  herself,  for  example, 
to  whose  service  he  was  specially  attached,  was 
very  different. 

The  great  recommendation  of  him  in  the 
eyes  of  Miss 'Dulphemia  and  her  friends,  and 

129 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

the  thing  that  gave  him  a  touch  of  mystery  was 
— and  what  higher  qualification  can  a  chauffeur 
want? — that  he  didn't  look  like  a  chauffeur  at 
all. 

"My  dear  Dulphie,"  whispered  Miss  Phil- 
ippa  Furlong,  the  rector's  sister  (who  was  at 
that  moment  Dulphemia's  second  self),  as  they 
sat  behind  the  new  chauffeur,  "don't  tell  me 
that  he  is  a  chauffeur,  because  he  isn't.  He  can 
chauffe,  of  course,  but  that's  nothing." 

For  the  new  chauffeur  had  a  bronzed  face, 
hard  as  metal,  and  a  stern  eye;  and  when  he  put 
on  a  chauffeur's  overcoat  somehow  it  seemed.to 
turn  into  a  military  greatcoat;  and  even  when 
he  put  on  the  round  cloth  cap  of  his  profession 
it  was  converted  straightway  into  a  military 
shako.  And  by  Miss  Dulphemia  and  her 
friends  it  was  presently  reported — or  was  in- 
vented?— that  he  had  served  in  the  Phihppines; 
which  explained  at  once  the  scar  upon  his  fore- 
head, which  must  have  been  received  at  Iloilo, 
or  Huila-Huila,  or  some  other  suitable  place. 

But  what  affected  Miss  Dulphemia  Brown 
herself  was  the  splendid  rudeness  of  the  chauf- 
feur's manner.  It  was  so  different  from  that 
of  the  young  men  of  the  salon.  Thus,  when 
Mr.  Sikleigh  Snoop  handed  her  into  the  car  at 
any  time  he  would  dance  about  saying,  "Allow 
me,"  and,  "Permit  me,"  and  would  dive  for- 
ward to  arrange  the  robes.    But  the  Philippine 

130 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

chauffeur  merely  swung  the  door  open  and  said 
to  Dulphemia,  "Get  In,"  and  then  slammed  it. 
This,  of  course,  sent  a  thrill  up  tHe  spine  and 
through  the  imagination  of  Miss  Dulphemia 
Rasselyer-^rown,  because  it  showed  that  the 
chauffeur  was  a  gentleman  in  disguise.  She 
thought  it  very  probable  that  he  was  a  British 
nobleman,  a  younger  son,  very  wild,  of  a  ducal 
family;  and  she  had  her  own  theories  as  to  why 
he  had  entered  the  service  of  the  Rasselyer- 
Browns.  To  be  quite  candid  about  it,  she  ex- 
pected that  the  Philippine  chauffeur  meant  to 
elope  with  her,  and  every  time  he  drove  her 
from  a  dinner  or  a  dance  she  sat  back  luxuri- 
ously, wishing  and  expecting  the  elopement  to 
begin. 

But  for  the  time  being  the  interest  of  Dul- 
phemia, as  of  everybody  else  that  was  anybody 
at  all,  centred  round  Mr.  Yahi-Bahi  and  the 
new  cult  of  Boohooism. 

After  the  visit  of  Mrs.  Rasselyer-Brown  a 
great  number  of  ladies,  also  in  motors,  drove 
down  to  the  house  of  Mr.  Yahi-Bahi.  And  all 
of  them,  whether  they  saw  Mr.  Yahi-Bahi  him- 
self or  his  Bengalee  assistant,  Mr.  Ram  Spudd, 
came  back  delighted. 

"Such  exquisite  tactl"  said  one.  "Such  deli- 
cacy! As  I  was  about  to  go  I  laid  a  five-dollar 
gold  piece   on   the   edge   of   the   little   table. 

131 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

Mr.  Spudd  scarcely  seemed  to  see  it.  He  mur- 
mured, 'Osiris  help  you!'  and  pointed  to  the 
ceiling.  I  raised  my  eyes  instinctively,  and 
when  I  lowered  them  the  money  had  disap- 
peared. I  think  he  must  have  caused  it  to 
vanish." 

"Oh,  I'm  sure  he  did,"  said  the  listener. 

Others  came  back  with  wonderful  stories  of 
Mr.  Yahi-Bahi's  occult  powers,  especially  his 
marvellous  gift  of  reading  the  future. 

Mrs.  Buncomhearst,  who  had  just  lost  her 
third  husband — ^by  divorce — had  received  from  • 
Mr.  Yahi-Bahi  a  glimpse  into  the  future  that 
was  almost  uncanny  in  its  exactness.  She  had 
asked  for  a  divination,  and  Mr.  Yahi-Bahi  had 
effected  one  by  causing  her  to  lay  six  ten-dollar 
pieces  on  the  table  arranged  in  the  form  of  a 
mystic  serpent.  Over  these  he  had  bent  and 
peered  deeply,  as  if  seeking  to  unravel  their 
meaning,  and  finally  he  had  given  her  the 
prophecy,  "Many  things  are  yet  to  happen  be- 
fore others  begin." 

"How  does  he  do  it?"  asked   everybody. 

As  a  result  of  all  this  it  naturally  came  about 
that  Mr.  Yahi-Bahi  and  Mr.  Ram  Spudd  were 
invited  to  appear  at  the  residence  of  Mrs.  Ras- 
selyer-Brown;  and  it  was  understood  that  steps 
would  be  taken  to  form  a  special  society,  to  be 
known  as  the  Yahi-Bahi  Oriental  Society. 

132 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

Mr.  Sikleigh  Snoop,  the  sex-poet,  was  the 
leading  spirit  in  the  organisation.  He  had  a 
special  fitness  for  the  task:  he  had  actually  re- 
sided in  India.  In  fact,  he  had  spent  six  weeks 
there  on  a  stop-over  ticket  of  a  round-the-world 
635  dollar  steamship  pilgrimage;  and  he  knew 
the  whole  country  from  Jehumbapore  in  Bhoo- 
tal  to  Jehumbalabad  in  the  Carnatic.  So  he 
was  looked  upon  as  a  great  authority  on  India, 
China,  Mongolia,  and  all  such  places,  by  the 
ladies  of  Plutoria  Avenue. 

Next  in  importance  was  Mrs.  Buncomhearst, 
who  became  later,  by  a  perfectly  natural  proc- 
ess, the  president  of  the  society.  She  was  al- 
ready president  of  the  Daughters  of  the  Revo- 
lution, a  society  confined  exclusively  to  the  de- 
scendants of  Washington's  officers  and  others; 
she  was  also  president  of  the  Sisters  of  Eng- 
land, an  organisation  limited  exclusively  to 
women  born  in  England  and  elsewhere ;  of  the 
Daughters  of  Kossuth,  made  up  solely  of  Hun- 
garians and  friends  of  Hungary  and  other  na- 
tions; and  of  the  Circle  of  Franz  Joseph,  which 
was  composed  exclusively  of  the  partisans,  and 
others,  of  Austria.  In  fact,  ever  since  she  had 
lost  her  third  husband,  Mrs.  Buncomhearst  had 
thrown  herself — that  was  her  phrase — Into  out- 
side activities.  Her  one  wish  was,  on  her  own 
statement,  to  lose  herself.  So  very  naturally 
Mrs.  Rasselyer-Brown  looked  at  once  to  Mrs. 
133 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

Buncomhearst  to  preside  over  the  meetings  of 
the  new  society. 

•  •  •  •  • 

The  large  dining-room  at  the  Rasselyer- 
Browns'  had  been  cleared  out  as  a  sort  of  audi- 
torium, and  in  it  some  fifty  or  sixty  of  Mrs. 
Rasselyer-Brown's  more  intimate  friends  had 
gathered.  The  whole  meeting  was  composed 
of  ladies,  except  for  the  presence  of  one  or  two 
men  who  represented  special  cases.  There  was, 
of  course,  little  Mr,  Spillikins,  with  his  vacuous 
face  and  football  hair,  who  was  there,  as  every- 
body knew,  on  account  of  Dulphemia;  and 
there  was  old  Judge  Longerstill,  who  sat  lean- 
ing on  a  gold-headed  stick  with  his  head  side- 
ways, trying  to  hear  some  fraction  of  what  was 
being  said.  He  came  to  the  gathering  in  the 
hope  that  it  would  prove  a  likely  place  for  sec- 
onding a  vote  of  thanks  and  saying  a  few  words 
— half  an  hour's  talk,  perhaps — on  the  consti- 
tution of  the  United  States.  Failing  that,  he 
felt  sure  that  at  least  someone  would  call  him 
"this  eminent  old  gentleman,"  and  even  that 
was  better  than  staying  at  home. 

But  for  the  most  part  the  audience  was 
composed  of  women,  and  they  sat  in  a  little 
buzz  of  conversation  waiting  for  Mr.  Yahi- 
Bahi. 

"I  wonder,"  called  Mrs.  Buncomhearst  from 
the  chair,  "if  some  lady  would  be  good  enough 

134 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

to  write  minutes?  Miss  Snagg,  I  wonder  if  you 
would  be  kind  enough  to  write  minutes  ?  Could 
you?" 

"I  shall  be  delighted,"  said  Miss  Snagg,  "but 
I'm  afraid  there's  hardly  time  to  write  them 
before  we  begin,  is  there?" 

"Oh,  but  it  would  be  all  right  to  write  them 
afterwards,"  chorussed  several  ladies  who 
understood  such  things;  "it's  quite  often  done 
that  way." 

"And  I  should  like  to  move  that  we  vote  a 
constitution,"  said  a  stout  lady  with  a  double 
eye-glass. 

"Is  that  carried?"  said  Mrs.  Buncomhearst. 
"All  those  in  favour  please  signify." 

Nobody  stirred. 

"Carried,"  said  the  president.  "And  per- 
haps you  would  be  good  enough,  Mrs.  Fyshe," 
she  said,  turning  towards  the  stout  lady,  "to 
zvrite  the  constitution." 

"Do  you  think  it  necessary  to  write  it?"  said 
Mrs.  Fyshe.  "I  should  like  to  move,  if  I  may, 
that  I  almost  wonder  whether  it  is  necessary  to 
write  the  constitution — ^unless,  of  course,  any- 
body thinks  that  we  really  ought  to." 

"Ladies,"  said  the  president,  "you  have 
heard  the  motion.    All  those  against  it " 

There  was  no  sign. 

"All  those  in  favour  of  it " 

There  was  still  no  sign. 
135 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

"Lost,"  she  said. 

Then,  looking  across  at  the  clock  on  the 
mantel-piece,  and  realising  that  Mi^  Yahi-Bahi 
must  have  been  delayed  and  that  something 
must  be  done,  she  said: 

"And  now,  ladies,  as  we  have  in  our  midst 
a  most  eminent  gentleman  who  probably  has 
thought  more  deeply  about  constitutions  than 


All  eyes  turned  at  once  towards  Judge  Long- 
erstill,  but  as  fortune  had  it  at  this  very  mo- 
ment Mr.  Sikleigh  Snoop  entered,  followed  by 
Mr.  Yahi-Bahi  and  Mr.  Ram  Spudd. 

Mr.  Yahi-Bahi  was  tall.  His  drooping  Ori- 
ental costume  made  him  taller  still.  He  had  a 
long  brown  face  and  liquid  brown  eyes  of  such 
depth  that  when  he  turned  them  full  upon  the 
ladies  before  him  a  shiver  of  interest  and  ap- 
prehension followed  in  the  track  of  his  glance. 

"My  dear,"  said  Miss  Snagg  afterwards,  "he 
seemed  simply  to  see  right  through  us." 

This  was  correct.    He  did. 

Mr.  Ram  Spudd  presented  a  contrast  to  his 
superior.  He  was  short  and  round,  with  a 
dimpled  mahogany  face  and  eyes  that  twinkled 
in  it  like  little  puddles  of  molasses.  His  head 
was  bound  in  a  turban  and  his  body  was  Swathed 
in  so  many  bands  and  sashes  that  he  looked 
almost  circular.  The  .clothes  of  both  Mr.  Yahi- 
Bahi  and  Ram  Spudd  were  covered  with  the 

136 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

mystic  signs  of  Buddha  and  the  seven  serpents 
of  Vishnu. 

It  was  impossible,  of  course,  for  Mr.  Yahi- 
Bahi  or  Mr.  Ram  Spudd  to  address  the  audi- 
ence. Their  knowledge  of  English  was  known 
to  be  too  slight  for  that.  Their  communica- 
tions were  expressed  entirely  through  the  me- 
dium of  Mr.  Snoop,  and  even  he  explained  af- 
terwards that  it  was  very  difficult.  The  only 
languages  of  India  which  he  was  able  to  speak, 
he  said,  with  any  fluency  were  Gargamic  and 
Gumaic,  both  of  these  being  old  Dravidian  dia- 
lects with  only  two  hundred  and  three  words 
in  each,  and  hence  in  themselves  very  difficult 
to  converse  in.  Mr.  Yahi-Bahi  answered  in 
what  Mr.  Snoop  understood  to  be  the  Iramic 
of  the  Vedas,  a  very  rich  language,  but  one 
which  unfortunately  he  did  not  understand.  The 
dilemma  is  one  familiar  to  all  Oriental  scholars. 

All  of  this  Mr.  Snoop  explained  in  the  open- 
ing speech  which  he  proceeded  to  make.  And 
after  this  he  went  on  to  disclose,  amid  deep 
interest,  the  general  nature  of  the  cult  of  Boo- 
hooism.  He  said  that  they  could  best  under- 
stand it  if  he  told  them  that  its  central  doc- 
trine was  that  of  Bahee.  Indeed,  the  first  aim 
of  all  followers  of  the  cult  was  to  attain  to 
Bahee.  Anybody  who  could  spend  a  certain 
number  of  hours  each  day,  say  sixteen,  in  silent 
meditation  on  Boohooism  would  find  his  mind 

137 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

gradually  reaching  a  condition  of  Bahee.  The 
chief  aim  of  Bahee  itself  was  sacrifice:  a  true 
follower  of  the  cult  must  be  willing  to  sacrifice 
his  friends,  or  his  relatives,  and  even  strangers, 
in  order  to  reach  Bahee.  In  this  way  one  was 
able  fully  to  realise  oneself  and  enter  into  the 
Higher  Indifference.  Beyond  this,  further 
meditation  and  fasting — ^by  which  was  meant 
living  solely  on  fish,  fruit,  wine,  and  meat — 
one  presently  attained  to  complete  Swaraj  or 
Control  of  Self,  and  might  in  time  pass  into  the 
absolute  Nirvana,  or  the  Negation  of  Empti- 
ness, the  supreme  goal  of  Boohooism. 

As  a  first  step  to  all  this,  Mr.  Snoop  ex- 
plained, each  neophyte  or  candidate  for  holi- 
ness must,  after  searching  his  own  heart,  send 
ten  dollars  to  Mr.  Yahi-Bahi.  Gold,  it  ap- 
peared, was  recognised  in  the  cult  of  Boohoo- 
ism as  typifying  the  three  chief  virtues,  whereas 
silver  or  paper  money  did  not;  even  national 
bank-notes  were  only  regarded  as  do  or,  a  half- 
way palliation;  and  outside  currencies  such  as 
Canadian  or  Mexican  bills  were  looked  upon  as 
entirely  boo,  or  contemptible.  The  Oriental 
view  of  money,  said  Mr.  Snoop,  was  far  su- 
perior to  our  own,  but  it  also  might  be  attained 
by  deep  thought,  and,  as  a  beginning,  by  send- 
ing ten  dollars  to  Mr.  Yahi-Bahi. 

After  this  Mr.  Snoop,  in  conclusion,  read  a 
very  beautiful  Hindu  poem,  translating  it  as  he 

138 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

went  along.  It  began,  "O  cow,  standing  be- 
side the  Ganges,  and  apparently  without  visible 
occupation,"  and  it  was  voted  exquisite  by  all 
who  heard  it.  The  absence  of  rhyme  and  the 
entire  removal  of  ideas  marked  it  as  far  be- 
yond anything  reached  as  yet  by  Occidental 
culture. 

When  Mr.  Snoop  had  concluded  the  presi- 
dent called  upon  Judge  Longerstill  for  a  few 
words  of  thanks,  which  he  gave,  followed  by  a 
brief  talk  on  the  constitution  of  the  United 
States. 

After  this  the  society  was  declared  consti- 
tuted, Mr.  Yahi-Bahi  made  four  salaams,  one 
to  each  point  of  the  compass,  and  the  meeting 
dispersed. 

And  that  evening,  over  fifty  dinner  tables, 
everybody  discussed  the  nature  of  Bahee,  and 
tried  in  vain  to  explain  it  to  men  too  stupid  to 
understand. 

Now  it  so  happened  that  on  the  very  after- 
noon of  this  meeting  at  Mrs.  Rasselyer-Brown's, 
the  Philippine  chauffeur  did  a  strange  and  pe- 
culiar thing.  He  first  asked  Mr.  Rasselyer- 
Brown  for  a  few  hours'  leave  of  absence  to  at- 
tend the  funeral  of  his  mother-in-law.  This 
was  a  request  which  Mr.  Rasselyer-Brown,  on 
principle,  never  refused  to  a  man-servant. 

Whereupon,  the  Philippine  chauffeur,  no 
139 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

longer  attired  as  one,  visited  the  residence  of 
Mr.  Yahi-Bahi.  He  let  himself  in  with  a  mar- 
vellous little  key  which  he  produced  from  a  very- 
wonderful  bunch  of  such.  He  was  in  the  house 
for  nearly  half  an  hour,  and  when  he  emerged 
the  notebook  in  his  breast  pocket,  had  there 
been  an  eye  to  read  it,  would  have  been  seen  to 
be  filled  with  stranger  details  in  regard  to  Ori- 
ental mysticism  than  even  Mr.  Yahi-Bahi  had 
given  to  the  world.  So  strange  were  they  that 
before  the  PhiHppine  chauffeur  returned  to  the 
Rasselyer-Brown  residence  he  telegraphed  cer- 
tain and  sundry  parts  of  them  to  New  York. 
But  why  he  should  have  addressed  them  to  the 
head  of  a  detective  bureau  instead  of  to  a  col- 
lege of  Oriental  research  it  passes  the  imagina- 
tion to  conceive.  But  as  the  chauffeur  duly  re- 
appeared at  motor-time  in  the  evening  the  inci- 
dent passed  unnoticed. 

•  •  •  .  •  • 

It  is  beyond  the  scope  of  the  present  narra- 
tive to  trace  the  progress  of  Boohooism  during 
the  splendid  but  brief  career  of  the  Yahi-Bahi 
Oriental  Society.  There  could  be  no  doubt  of 
its  success.  Its  principles  appealed  with  great 
strength  to  all  the  more  cultivated  among  the 
ladies  of  Plutoria  Avenue.  There  was  some- 
thing in  the  Oriental  mysticism  of  its  doctrines 
which  rendered  previous  belief  stale  and  puerile. 
The  practice  of  the  sacred  rites  began  at  once. 

140 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

The  ladies'  counters  of  the  Plutorian  banks 
were  inundated  with  requests  for  ten-dollar 
pieces  in  exchange  for  bank-notes.  At  dinner 
in  the  best  houses  nothing  was  eaten  except  a 
thin  soup  (or  bru),  followed  by  fish,  succeeded 
by  meat  or  by  game,  especially  such  birds  as 
are  particularly  pleasing  to  Buddha,  as  the 
partridge,  the  pheasant,  and  the  woodcock. 
After  this,  except  for  fruits  and  wine,  the  prin- 
ciple of  Swaraj,  or  denial  of  self,  was  rigidly 
imposed.  Special  Oriental  dinners  of  this  sort 
were  given,  followed  by  listening  to  the  reading 
of  Oriental  poetry,  with  closed  eyes  and  with 
the  mind  as  far  as  possible  in  a  state  of  Stoj, 
or  Negation  of  Thought. 

By  this  means  the  general  doctrine  of  Boo- 
hooism  spread  rapidly.  Indeed,  a  great  many 
of  the  members  of  the  society  soon  attained  to 
a  stage  of  Bahee,  or  the  Higher  Indifference, 
that  it  would  have  been  hard  to  equal  outside 
of  Juggapore  or  Jumbumbabad.  For  example, 
when  Mrs.  Buncomhearst  learned  of  the  re- 
marriage of  her  second  husband — she  had  lost 
him  three  years  before,  owing  to  a  difference 
of  opinion  on  the  emancipation  of  women — she 
shewed  the  most  complete  Bahee  possible.  And 
when  Miss  Snagg  learned  that  her  brother  in 
Venezuela  had  died — a  very  sudden  death 
brought  on  by  drinking  rum  for  seventeen  years 
— and  had  left  her  ten  thousand  dollars,  the 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

Bahee  which  she  exhibited  almost  amounted  to 
Nirvana. 

In  fact,  the  very  general  dissemination  of  the 
Oriental  idea  became  more  and  more  notice- 
able with  each  week  that  passed.  Some  mem- 
bers attained  to  so  complete  a  Bahee,  or  Higher 
Indifference,  that  they  even  ceased  to  attend  the 
meetings  of  the  society;  others  reached  a 
Swaraj,  or  Control  of  Self,  so  great  that  they 
no  longer  read  its  pamphlets ;  while  others  again 
actually  passed  into  Nirvana,  to  a  Complete 
Negation  of  Self,  so  rapidly  that  they  did  not 
even  pay  their  subscriptions. 

But  features  of  this  sort,  of  course,  are  fa- 
miliar wherever  a  successful  occult  creed  makes 
its  way  against  the  prejudices  of  the  multitude. 

The  really  notable  part  of  the  whole  experi- 
ence was  the  marvellous  demonstration  of  oc- 
cult power  which  attended  the  final  seance  of 
the  society,  the  true  nature  of  which  is  still 
wrapped  in  mystery. 

For  some  weeks  it  had  been  rumoured  that  a 
very  special  feat  or  demonstration  of  power  by 
Mr.  Yahi-Bahi  was  under  contemplation.  In 
fact,  the  rapid  spread  of  Swaraj  and  of  Nir- 
vana among  the  members  rendered  such  a  feat 
highly  desirable.  Just  what  form  the  demon- 
stration would  take  was  for  some  time  a  matter 
of  doubt.  It  was  whispered  at  first  that  Mr. 
Yahi-Bahi  would  attempt  the  mysterious  east- 

142 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

em  rite  of  burying  Ram  Spudd  alive  In  the 
garden  of  the  Rasselyer-Brown  residence  and 
leaving  him  there  In  a  state  of  Stoj,  or  Sus- 
pended Inanition,  for  eight  days.  But  this  pro- 
ject was  abandoned,  owing  to  some  doubt,  ap- 
parently. In  the  mind  of  Mr.  Ram  Spudd  as  to 
his  astral  fitness  for  the  high  state  of  Stoj 
necessitated  by  the  experiment. 

At  last  It  became  known  to  the  members  of 
the  Poosh,  or  Inner  Circle,  under  the  seal  of 
confidence,  that  Mr.  Yahi-Bahl  would  attempt 
nothing  less  than  the  supreme  feat  of  occultism, 
namely,  a  reincarnation,  or  more  correctly  a 
reastralisation  of  Buddha. 

The  members  of  the  Inner  Circle  shivered 
with  a  luxurious  sense  of  mystery  when  they 
heard  of  it. 

"Has  It  ever  been  done  before?"  they  asked 
of  Mr.  Snoop. 

"Only  a  few  times,"  he  said;  "once,  I  be- 
lieve, by  Jam-bum,  the  famous  Yogi  of  the 
Carnatic;  once,  perhaps  twice,  by  Boohoo,  the 
founder  of  the  sect.  But  it  is  looked  upon  as 
extremely  rare.  Mr.  Yahi  tells  me  that  the 
great  danger  is  that,  if  the  slightest  part  of  the 
formula  is  Incorrectly  observed,  the  person  at- 
tempting the  astralisation  is  swallowed  up  into 
nothingness.  However,  he  declares  himself 
willing  to  try." 


145 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

,  _ 

The  seance  was  to  take  place  at  Mrs.  Ras- 
selyer-Brown's  residence,  and  was  to  be  at  mid- 
night. 

"At  midnight  I"  said  each  member  in  surprise. 
And  the  answer  was,  "Yes,  at  midnight.  You 
see,  midnight  here  is  exactly  midday  in  Allah- 
abad in  India." 

This  explanation  was,  of  course,  ample. 
"Midnight,"  repeated  everybody  to  everybody 
else,  "is  exactly  midday  in  Allahabad."  That 
made  things  perfectly  clear.  Whereas  if  mid- 
night had  been  midday  in  Timbuctoo  the  whole 
situation  would  have  been  different. 

Each  of  the  ladies  was  requested  to  bring  to 
the  seance  some  ornament  of  gold;  but  it  must 
be  plain  gold,  without  any  setting  of  stones. 

It  was  known  already  that,  according  to  the 
cult  of  Boohooism,  gold,  plain  gold,  is  the  seat 
of  the  three  virtues — beauty,  wisdom,  and 
grace.  Therefore,  according  to  the  creed  of 
Boohooism,  anyone  who  has  enough  gold,  plain 
gold,  is  endowed  with  these  virtues  and  is  all 
right.  All  that  is  needed  is  to  have  enough  of 
it;  the  virtues  follow  as  a  consequence. 

But  for  the  great  experiment  the  gold  used 
must  not  be  set  with  stones,  with  the  one  excep- 
tion of  rubies,  which  are  known  to  be  endowed 
with  the  three  attributes  of  Hindu  worship — 
modesty,  loquacity,  and  pomposity. 

In  the  present  case  it  was  found  that  as  a 
144 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 


number  of  ladies  had  nothing  but  gold  orna- 
ments set  with  diamonds,  a  second  exception 
was  made;  especially  as  Mr.  Yahi-Bahi,  on  ap- 
peal, decided  that  diamonds,  though  less  pleas- 
ing to  Buddha  than  rubies,  possessed  the 
secondary  Hindu  virtues  of  divisibility,  mova- 
bility,  and  disposability. 

On  the  evening  in  question  the  residence  of 
Mrs.  Rasselyer-Brown  might  have  been  ob- 
served at  midnight  wrapped  in  utter  darkness. 
No  lights  were  shown.  A  single  taper,  brought 
by  Ram  Spudd  from  the  Taj  Mohal,  and  resem- 
bling in  its  outer  texture  those  sold  at  the  five- 
and-ten  store  near  Mr.  Spudd's  residence, 
burned  on  a  small  table  in  the  vast  dining-room. 
The  servants  had  been  sent  upstairs  and  ex- 
pressly enjoined  to  retire  at  half  past  ten. 
Moreover,  Mr.  Rasselyer-Brown  had  had  to 
attend  that  evening,  at  the  Mausoleum  Club,  a 
meeting  of  the  trustees  of  the  Church  of  St. 
Asaph,  and  he  had  come  home  at  eleven  o'clock, 
as  he  always  did  after  diocesan  work  of  this 
sort,  quite  used  up ;  in  fact,  so  fatigued  that  he 
had  gone  upstairs  to  his  own  suite  of  rooms 
sideways,  his  knees  bending  under  him.  So 
utterly  used  up  was  he  with  his  church  work 
that,  as  far  as  any  interest  in  what  might  be 
going  on  in  his  own  residence,  he  had  attained 
to  a  state  of  Bahee,  or  Higher  Indifference, 
that  even  Buddha  might  have  envied. 

145 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

The  guests,  as  had  been  arranged,  arrived 
noiselessly  and  on  foot.  All  motors  were  left 
at  least  a  block  away.  They  made  their  way 
up  the  steps  of  the  darkened  house,  and  were 
admitted  without  ringing,  the  door  opening 
silently  in  front  of  them.  Mr.  Yahi-Bahi  and 
Mr.  Ram  Spudd,  who  had  arrived  on  foot  car- 
rying a  large  parcel,  were  already  there,  and 
were  behind  a  screen  in  the  darkened  room, 
reported  to  be  in  meditation. 

At  a  whispered  word  from  Mr.  Snoop,  who 
did  duty  at  the  door,  all  furs  and  wraps  were 
discarded  in  the  hall  and  laid  in  a  pile.  Then 
the  guests  passed  silently  into  the  great  dining- 
room.  There  was  no  hght  in  it  except  the  dim 
taper  which  stood  on  a  little  table.  On  this 
table  each  guest,  as  instructed,  laid  an  ornament 
of  gold,  and  at  the  same  time  was  uttered  in  a 
low  voice  the  word  "Ksvoo."  This  means, 
"O  Buddha,  I  herewith  lay  my  unworthy  offer- 
ing at  thy  feet;  take  it  and  keep  it  for  ever." 
It  was  explained  that  this  was  only  a  form. 

•  •  •  •  • 

"What  is  he  doing?"  whispered  the  assem- 
bled guests  as  they  saw  Mr.  Yahi-Bahi  pass 
across  the  darkened  room  and  stand  in  front  of 
the  sideboard. 

"Hush!"  said  Mr.  Snoop;  "he's  laying  the 
propitiatory  offering  for  Buddha." 

146 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

"It's  an  Indian  rite,"  whispered  Mrs.  Ras- 
selyer-Brown. 

Mr,  Yahi-Bahi  could  be  seen  dimly  moving 
to  and  fro  in  front  of  the  sideboard.  There 
was  a  faint  clinking  of  glass. 

"He  has  to  set  out  a  glass  of  Burmese  brandy, 
powdered  over  with  nutmeg  and  aromatics," 
whispered  Mrs.  Rasselyer-Brown.  "I  had  the 
greatest  hunt  to  get  it  all  for  him.  He  said  that 
nothing  but  Burmese  brandy  would  do,  because 
in  the  Hindu  religion  the  god  can  only  be  in- 
voked with  Burmese  brandy,  or,  failing  that, 
Hennessy's  with  three  stars,  which  is  not  en- 
tirely displeasing  to  Buddha." 

"The  aromatics,"  whispered  Mr.  Snoop, 
"are  supposed  to  waft  a  perfume  or  incense  to 
reach  the  nostrils  of  the  god.  The  glass  of 
propitiatory  wine  and  the  aromatic  spices  are 
mentioned  in  the  Vishnu-Buddayat." 

Mr.  Yahi-Bahi,  his  preparations  completed, 
was  now  seen  to  stand  in  front  of  the  sideboard 
bowing  deeply  four  times  in  an  Oriental  salaam. 
The  light  of  the  single  taper  had  by  this  time 
burned  so  dim  that  his  movements  were  vague 
and  uncertain.  His  body  cast  great  flickering 
shadows  on  the  half-seen  wall.  From  his  throat 
there  issued  a  low  wail  in  which  the  word  wah  I 
wah  1  could  be  distinguished. 

The  excitement  was  intense. 
147 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

"What  does  'wah'  mean?"  whispered  Mr. 
Spillikins. 

"Hush I"  said  Mr.  Snoop;  "it  means,  *0 
Buddha,  wherever  thou  art  in  thy  lofty  Nir- 
vana, descend  yet  once  in  astral  form  before  our 
eyes!'" 

Mr.  Yahl-Bahi  rose.  He  was  seen  to  place 
one  finger  on  his  lips  and  then,  silently  moving 
across  the  room,  he  disappeared  behind  the 
screen.  Of  what. Mr.  Ram  Spudd  was  doing 
during  this  period  there  is  no  record.  It  was 
presumed  that  he  was  still  praying. 

The  stillness  was  now  absolute. 

"We  must  wait  in  perfect  silence,"  whispered 
Mr.  Snoop  from  the  extreme  tips  of  his  lips. 

Everybody  sat  in  strained  intensity,  silent, 
looking  towards  the  vague  outline  of  the  side- 
board. 

The  minutes  passed.  No  one  moved.  All 
were  spellbound  in  expectancy. 

Still  the  minutes  passed.  The  taper  had  flick- 
ered down  till  the  great  room  was  almost  in 
darkness. 

Could  it  be  that  by  some  neglect  in  the  prepa- 
rations, the  substitution  perhaps  of  the  wrong 
brandy,  the  astralisation  could  not  be  effected? 

But  no. 

Quite  suddenly,  it  seemed,  everybody  in  the 
darkened  room  was  aware  of  a  presence.  That 
was  the  word  as  afterwards  repeated  In  a  hun- 

148 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

dred  confidential  discussions.  A  presence.  One 
couldn't  call  it  a  body.  It  wasn't.  It  was  a 
figure,  an  astral  form,  a  presence. 

"Buddha  1"  they  gasped  as  they  looked  at  it. 

Just  how  the  figure  entered  the  room,  the 
spectators  could  never  afterwards  agree.  Some 
thought  it  appeared  through  the  wall,  dehber- 
ately  astralising  itself  as  it  passed  through  the 
bricks.  Others  seemed  to  have  seen  it  pass  in 
at  the  further  door  of  the  room,  as  if  it  had 
astralised  itself  at  the  foot  of  the  stairs  in  the 
back  of  the  hall  outside. 

Be  that  as  it  may,  there  it  stood  before  them, 
t  le  astralised  shape  of  the  Indian  deity,  so  that 
to  every  lip  there  rose  the  half-articulated  word, 
"Buddha";  or  at  least  to  every  lip  except 
that  of  Mrs.  Rasselyer-Brown.  From  her  there 
came  no  sound. 

The  figure  as  afterwards  described  was  at- 
tired in  a  long  shirdk,  such  as  is  worn  by  the 
Grand  Llama  of  Tibet,  and  resembling,  if  the 
comparison  were  not  profane,  a  modern  dress- 
ing-gown. The  legs,  if  one  might  so  call  them, 
of  the  apparition  were  enwrapped  in  loose  pun- 
jahamas,  a  word  which  is  said  to  be  the  origin 
of  the  modern  pyjamas;  while  the  feet,  if  they 
were  feet,  were  encased  in  loose  slippers. 

Buddha  moved  slowly  across  the  room.  Ar- 
rived at  the  sideboard  the  astral  figure  paused, 
and  even  in  the  uncertain  light  Buddha  was 
149 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

seen  to  raise  and  drink  the  propitiatory  offer- 
ing. That  much  was  perfectly  clear.  Whether 
Buddha  spoke  or  not  is  doubtful.  Certain  of 
the  spectators  thought  that  he  said,  "Must  a 
fagotnit,"  which  is  Hindustanee  for  "Blessings 
on  this  house."  To  Mrs.  Rasselyer-Brown's 
distracted  mind  it  seemed  as  if  Buddha  said, 
"I  must  have  forgotten  it."  But  this  wild  fancy 
she  never  breathed  to  a  soul. 

Silently  Buddha  recrossed  the  room,  slowly 
wiping  one  arm  across  his  mouth  after  the 
Hindu  gesture  of  farewell. 

For  perhaps  a  full  minute  after  the  disap- 
pearance of  Buddha  not  a  soul  moved.  Then 
quite  suddenly  Mrs.  Rasselyer-Brown,  unable 
to  stand  the  tension  any  longer,  pressed  an 
electric  switch  and  the  whole  room  was  flooded 
with  light. 

There  sat  the  affrighted  guests  staring  at  one 
another  with  pale  faces. 

But,  to  the  amazement  and  horror  of  all,  the 
little  table  in  the  centre  stood  empty — not  a 
single  gem,  not  a  fraction  of  the  gold  that  had 
lain  upon  it  was  left.    All  had  disappeared. 

The  truth  seemed  to  burst  upon  everyone  at 
once.  There  was  no  doubt  of  what  had  hap- 
pened. 

The  gold  and  the  jewels  had  been  deastral- 
ised.     Under  the  occult  power  of  the  vision 

ISO 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

they  had  been  demonetised,  engulfed  into  the 
astral  plane  along  with  the  vanishing  Buddha. 

Filled  with  the  sense  of  horror  still  to  come, 
somebody  pulled  aside  the  little  screen.  They 
fully  expected  to  find  the  lifeless  bodies  of  Mr. 
Yahi-Bahi  and  the  faithful  Ram  Spudd.  What 
they  saw  before  them  was  more  dreadful  still. 
The  outer  Oriental  garments  of  the  two  de- 
votees lay  strewn  upon  the  floor.  The  long 
sash  of  Yahi-Bahi  and  the  thick  turban  of  Ram 
Spudd  were  side  by  side  near  them ;  almost  sick- 
ening In  its  repulsive  realism  was  the  thick 
black  head  of  hair  of  the  junior  devotee,  ap- 
parently torn  from  his  scalp  as  if  by  lightning 
and  bearing  a  horrible  resemblance  to  the  cast- 
off  wig  of  an  actor. 

The  truth  was  too  plain. 

"They  are  engulfed  1"  cried  a  dozen  voices 
at  once. 

It  was  realised  in  a  flash  that  Yahi-Bahi  and 
Ram  Spudd  had  paid  the  penalty  of  their  dar- 
ing with  their  lives.  Through  some  fatal  neg- 
lect, against  which  they  had  fairly  warned  the 
participants  of  the  seance,  the  two  Orientals 
had  been  carried  bodily  in  the  astral  plane. 

"How  dreadful!"  murmured  Mr.  Snoop. 
"We  must  have  made  some  awful  error." 

"Are  they  deastralised?"  murmured  Mr«. 
Buncomhearst. 

"Not  a  doubt  of  it,"  said  Mr.  Snoop. 
151 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

And  then  another  voice  in  the  group  was 
heard  to  say,  "We  must  hush  it  up.  We  can't 
have  it  known!" 

On  which  a  chorus  of  voices  joined  in,  every- 
body urging  that  it  must  be  hushed  up. 

"Couldn't  you  try  to  reastralise  them?"  said 
somebody  to  Mr.  Snoop. 

"No,  no,"  said  Mr.  Snoop,  still  shaking. 
"Better  not  try  to.  We  must  hush  it  up  if  we 
can. 

And  the  general  assent  to  this  sentiment 
shewed  that  after  all  the  principles  of  Bahee, 
or  Indifference  to  Others,  had  taken  a  real  root 
in  the  society. 

"Hush  it  up,"  cried  everybody,  and  there 
was  a  general  move  towards  the  hall. 

"Good  Heavens!"  exclaimed  Mrs.  Buncom- 
hearst;  "our  wraps!" 

"Deastralisedl"  said  the  guests. 

There  was  a  moment  of  further  consterna- 
tion as  everybody  gazed  at  the  spot  where  the 
ill-fated  pile  of  furs  and  wraps  had  lain. 

"Never  mind,"  said  everybody,  "let's  go 
without  them — don't  stay.  Just  think  if  the 
police  should " 

And  at  the  word  police,  all  of  a  sudden  there 
was  heard  in  the  street  the  clanging  of  a  bell 
and  the  racing  gallop  of  the  horses  of  the  police 
patrol  waggon. 

153 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

"The  police  I"  cried  everybody.  "Hush  it 
up  I    Hush  it  up  I" 

For  of  course  the  principles  of  Bahee  are  not 
known  to  the  police. 

In  another  moment  the  door  bell  of  the  house 
rang  with  a  long  and  violent  peal,  and  in  a  sec- 
ond as  It  seemed,  the  whole  hall  was  filled  with 
bulky  figures  uniformed  in  blue. 

"It's  all  right,  Mrs.  Rasselyer-Brown," 
cried  a  loud,  firm  voice  from  the  sidewalk.  "We 
have  them  both.  Everything  is  here.  We  got 
them  before  they'd  gone  a  block.  But  if  you 
don't  mind,  the  police  must  get  a  couple  of 
names  for  witnesses  in  the  warrant." 

It  was  the  Philippine  chauffeur.  But  he  was 
no  longer  attired  as  such.  He  wore  the  uni- 
form of  an  Inspector  of  police,  and  there  was 
the  metal  badge  of  the  Detective  Department 
now  ostentatiously  outside  his  coat. 

And  beside  him,  one  on  each  side  of  him, 
there  stood  the  deastrallsed  forms  of  Yahl- 
Bahi  and  Ram  Spudd.  They  wore  long  over- 
coats, doubtless  the  contents  of  the  magic  par- 
cels, and  the  Philippine  chauffeur  had  a  grip  of 
iron  on  the  neck  of  each  as  they  stood.  Mr. 
Spudd  had  lost  his  Oriental  hair,  and  the  face 
of  Mr.  Yahl-Bahl,  perhaps  in  the  struggle 
which  had  taken  place,  had  been  scraped  white 
in  patches. 

They  were  making  no  attempt  to  break  away. 
153 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

Indeed,  Mr.  Spudd,  with  that  complete  Bahec, 
or  Submission  to  Fate,  which  Is  attained  only 
by  long  services  in  state  penitentiaries,  was 
smiling  and  smoking  a  cigarette. 

"We  were  waiting  for  them,"  explained  a 
tall  police  officer  to  the  two  or  three  ladles  who 
now  gathered  round  him  with  a  return  of  cour- 
age. "They  had  the  stuff  in  a  hand-cart  'and 
were  pushing  it  away.  The  chief  caught  them 
at  the  corner,  and  rang  the  patrol  from  there. 
You'll  find  everything  all  right,  I  think,  ladies," 
he  added,  as  a  burly  assistant  was  seen  carrying 
an  armload  of  furs  up  the  steps. 

Somehow  many  of  the  ladies  realised  at  the 
moment  what  cheery,  safe,  reliable  people  po- 
licemen in  blue  are,  and  what  a  friendly,  fa- 
miliar shelter  they  offer  against  the  wiles  of 
Oriental  occultism. 

"Are  they  old  criminals  ?"  someone  asked. 

"Yes,  ma'am.  They've  worked  this  same 
thing  in  four  cities  already,  and  both  of  them 
have  done  time,  and  lots  of  It.  They've  only 
been  out  six  months.  No  need  to  worry  over 
them,"  he  concluded  with  a  shrug  of  the 
shoulders. 

So  the  furs  were  restored  and  the  gold  and 
the  jewels  parcelled  out  among  the  owners,  and 
in  due  course  Mr.  Yahi-Bahl  and  Mr.  Ram 
Spudd  were  lifted  up  into  the  patrol  waggon, 
where  they  seated  themselves  with  a  composure 

IS4 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

worthy  of  the  best  traditions  of  Jehumbabah 
and  Bahoolapore.  In  fact,  Mr.  Spudd  was 
heard  to  address  the  police  as  "boys,"  and  to 
remark  that  they  had  "got  them  good"  that 
time. 

So  the  seance  ended  and  the  guests  vanished, 
and  the  Yahi-Bahi  Society  terminated  itself 
without  even  a  vote  of  dissolution. 

And  in  all  the  later  confidential  discussions 
of  the  episode  only  one  point  of  mysticism  re- 
mained. After  they  had  time  really  to  reflect 
on  it,  free  from  all  danger  of  arrest,  the  mem- 
bers of  the  society  realised  that  on  one  point 
the  police  were  entirely  off  the  truth  of  things. 
For  Mr.  Yahi-Bahi,  whether  a  thief  or  not,  and 
whether  he  came  from  the  Orient,  or,  as  the 
police  said,  from  Missouri,  had  actually  suc- 
ceeded in  reastralising  Buddha. 

Nor  was  anyone  more  emphatic  on  this  point 
than  Mrs.  Rasselyer-Brown  herself. 

"For  after  all,"  she  said,  "if  it  was  not  Bud- 
dha, who  was  it?" 

And  the  question  was  never  answered. 


^i$ 


Chapter  V. — The  Love  Story  of  Mr.  Peter 
Spillikins 

ALMOST  any  day,  on  Plutorla  Avenue 
or  thereabouts,  you  may  see  little 
Mr.  Spillikins  out  walking  with  his 
four  tall  sons,  who  are  practically  as 
old  as  himself. 

To  be  exact,  Mr.  Spillikins  is  twenty-four, 
and  Bob,  the  oldest  of  the  boys,  must  be  at  least 
twenty.  Their  exact  ages  are  no  longer  known, 
because,  by  a  dreadful  accident,  their  mother 
forgot  them.  This  was  at  a  time  when  the  boys 
were  all  at  Mr.  Wackem's  Academy  for  Excep- 
tional Youths  in  the  foothills  of  Tennessee,  and 
while  their  mother,  Mrs.  Everleigh,  was  spend- 
ing the  winter  on  the  Riviera  and  felt  that  for 
their  own  sake  she  must  not  allow  herself  to 
have  the  boys  with  her. 

But  now,  of  course,  since  Mrs.  Everleigh  has 
remarried  and  become  Mrs.  Everleigh-Spillikins 
there  is  no  need  to  keep  them  at  Mr.  Wackem's 
any  longer.  Mr.  Spillikins  is  able  to  look  after 
them. 

Mr.  Spillikins  generally  wears  a  little  top  hat 
and  an  English  morning  coat.  The  boys  are  in 
Eton  jackets  and  black  trousers,  which,  at  their 

iS6 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

mother's  wish,  are  kept  just  a  little  too  short  for 
them.  This  is  because  Mrs.  Everleigh-Spilli- 
kins  feels  that  the  day  will  come  some  day — 
say  fifteen  years  hence, — when  the  boys  will  no 
longer  be  children,  and  meantime  it  is  so  nice 
to  feel  that  they  are  still  mere  boys.  Bob  is  the 
eldest,  but  Sib  the  youngest  is  the  tallest,  where- 
as Willie  the  third  boy  is  the  dullest,  although 
this  has  often  been  denied  by  those  who  claim 
that  Gib  the  second  boy  is  just  a  trifle  duller. 
Thus  at  any  rate  there  is  a  certain  equality  and 
good  fellowship  all  round. 

Mrs.  Everleigh-Spillikins  Is  not  to  be  seen 
walking  with  them.  She  is  probably  at  the  race- 
meet,  being  taken  there  by  Captain  Cormorant 
of  the  United  States  navy,  which  Mr.  Spillikins 
considers  very  handsome  of  him.  Every  now 
and  then  the  captain,  being  in  the  navy,  is  com- 
pelled to  be  at  sea  for  perhaps  a  whole  after- 
noon or  even  several  days;  in  which  case  Mrs. 
Everleigh-Spillikins  is  very  g^erally  taken  to 
the  Hunt  Club  or  the  Country  Club  by  Lieu- 
tenant Hawk,  which  Mr.  Spillikins  regards  as 
awfully  thoughtful  of  him.  Or  if  Lieutenant 
Hawk  Is  also  out  of  town  for  the  day,  as  he 
sometimes  has  to  be,  because  he  is  In  the  United 
States  army,  Mrs.  Everleigh-Spillikins  Is  taken 
out  by  old  Colonel  Shake,  who  Is  in  the  State 
militia  and  who  Is  at  leisure  all  the  time. 

During  their  walks  on  Plutoria  Avenue  one 
157 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

may  hear  the  four  boys  addressing  Mr.  Spilli- 
kins as  "father"  and  "dad"  in  deep  bull-frog 
voices. 

"Say,  dad,"  drawls  Bob,  "couldn't  we  all  go 
to  the  ball  game?" 

"No,  say,  dad,"  says  Gib,  "let's  all  go  back 
to  the  house  and  play  five-cent  pool  in  the  bil- 
liard-room?" 

"All  right,  boys,"  says  Mr.  Spillikins.  And  a 
few  minutes  later  one  may  see  them  all  hustling 
up  the  steps  of  the  Everleigh-Spillikins's  man- 
sion, quite  eager  at  the  prospect,  and  all  talking 
together. 

•  •  •  •  • 

Now  the  whole  of  this  daily  panorama,  to  the 
eye  that  can  read  it,  represents  the  outcome  of 
the  tangled  love  story  of  Mr.  Spillikins,  which 
culminated  during  the  summer  house-party  at 
Castel  Casteggio,  the  woodland  retreat  of  Mr. 
and  Mrs.  Newberry. 

But  to  understand  the  story  one  must  turn 
back  a  year  or  so  to  the  time  when  Mr.  Peter 
Spillikins  used  to  walk  on  Plutoria  Avenue 
alone,  or  sit  in  the  Mausoleum  Club  listening 
to  the  advice  of  people  who  told  him  that  he 
really  ought  to  get  married. 

•  •  •  •  • 

In  those  days  the  first  thing  that  one  noticed 
about  Mr.  Peter  Spillikins  was  his  exalted  view 
of  the  other  sex.    Every  time  he  passed  a  beau- 

is8 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

tiful  woman  in  the  street  he  said  to  himself,  "I 
say!"  Even  when  he  met  a  moderately  beauti- 
ful one  he  murmured,  "By  Jove!"  When  an 
Easter  hat  went  sailing  past,  or  a  group  of  sum- 
mer parasols  stood  talking  on  a  leafy  corner, 
Mr.  Spillikins  ejaculated,  "My  word!"  At  the 
opera  and  at  tango  teas  his  projecting  blue  eyes 
almost  popped  out  of  his  head. 

Similarly,  if  he  happened  to  be  with  one  of 
his  friends,  he  would  murmur,  "I  say,  do  look 
at  that  beautiful  girl,"  or  would  exclaim,  "I 
say,  don't  look,  but  isn't  that  an  awfully  pretty 
girl  across  the  street?"  or  at  the  opera,  "Old 
man,  don't  let  her  see  you  looking,  but  do  you 
see  that  lovely  girl  in  the  box  opposite?" 

One  must  add  to  this  that  Mr.  Spillikins,  in 
spite  of  his  large  and  bulging  blue  eyes,  enjoyed 
the  heavenly  gift  of  short  sight.  As  a  conse- 
quence he  lived  in  a  world  of  amazingly  beauti- 
ful women.  And  as  his  mind  was  focussed  in 
the  same  way  as  his  eyes  he  endowed  them  with 
all  the  virtues  and  graces  which  ought  to  adhere 
to  fifty-dollar  flowered  hats  and  cerise  parasols 
with  ivory  handles. 

Nor,  to  do  him  justice,  did  Mr.  Spillikins 
confine  this  attitude  to  his  view  of  women  alone. 
He  brought  is  to  bear  on  everything.  Every 
time  he  went  to  the  opera  he  would  come  away 
enthusiastic,  saying,  "By  Jove,  isn't  it  simply 
splendid  I  Of  course  I  haven't  the  ear  to  appre- 
IS9 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

date  it — I'm  not  musical,  you  know — ^but  even 
with  the  little  that  I  know,  it's  great;  it  abso- 
lutely puts  me  to  sleep."  And  of  each  new 
novel  that  he  bought  he  said,  "It's  a  perfectly 
wonderful  book !  Of  course  I  haven't  the  head 
to  understand  it,  so  I  didn't  finish  it,  but  it's 
simply  thrilling."  Similarly  with  painting,  "It's 
one  of  the  most  marvellous  pictures  I  ever  saw," 
he  would  say.  "Of  course  I've  no  eye  for  pic- 
tures, and  I  couldn't  see  anything  in  it,  but  it's 
wonderful !" 

The  career  of  Mr.  Spillikins  up  to  the  point 
of  which  we  are  speaking  had  hitherto  not  been 
very  satisfactory,  or  at  least  not  from  the  point 
of  view  of  Mr.  Boulder,  who  was  his  uncle  and 
trustee.  Mr.  Boulder's  first  idea  had  been  to 
have  Mr.  Spillikins  attend  the  university.  Dr. 
Boomer,  the  president,  had  done  his  best  to 
spread  abroad  the  idea  that  a  university  educa- 
tion was  perfectly  suitable  even  for  the  rich; 
that  it  didn't  follow  that  because  a  man  was  a 
university  graduate  he  need  either  work  or  pur- 
sue his  studies  any  further;  that  what  the  uni- 
versity aimed  to  do  was  merely  to  put  a  certain 
stamp  upon  a  man.  That  was  all.  And  this 
stamp,  according  to  the  tenor  of  the  president's 
convocation  addresses,  was  perfectly  harmless. 
No  one  ought  to  be  afraid  of  it.  As  a  result, 
a  great  many  of  the  very  best  young  men  in  the 
City,  who  had  no  need  for  education  at  all, 

i6o 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

were  beginning  to  attend  college.  "It  marked," 
said  Dr.  Boomer,  "a  revolution." 

Mr.  Spillikins  himself  was  fascinated  with 
his  studies.  The  professors  seemed  to  him  liv- 
ing wonders. 

"By  Jove  I"  he  said,  "the  professor  of  mathe- 
matics is  a  marvel.  You  ought  to  see  him  ex- 
plaining trigonometry  on  the  blackboard.  You 
can't  understand  a  word  of  it."  He  hardly 
knew  which  of  his  studies  he  liked  best. 
"Physics,"  he  said,  "is  a  wonderful  study.  I 
got  five  per  cent,  in  it.  But,  by  Jovel  I  had 
to  work  for  it.  I'd  go  in  for  it  altogether  if 
they'd  let  me." 

But  that  was  just  the  trouble — they  wouldn't. 
And  so  in  course  of  time  Mr.  Spillikins  was  com- 
pelled, for  academic  reasons,  to  abandon  his 
life-work.  His  last  words  about  it  were,  "Gad  I 
I  nearly  passed  in  trigonometry!"  and  he  al- 
ways said  afterwards  that  he  had  got  a  tre- 
mendous lot  out  of  the  university. 

After  that,  as  he  had  to  leave  the  university, 
his  trustee,  Mr.  Boulder,  put  Mr.  Spillikins  into 
business.  It  was,  of  course,  his  own  business, 
one  of  the  many  enterprises  for  which  Mr.  Spil- 
likins, ever  since  he  was  twenty-one,  had  already 
been  signing  documents  and  countersigning 
cheques.  So  Mr.  Spillikins  found  himself  in  a 
mahogany  office  selling  wholesale  oil.    And  he 

i6i 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

liked  it.  He  said  that  business  sharpened  one 
up  tremendously. 

"I'm  afraid,  Mr.  Spillikins,"  a  caller  in  the 
mahogany  office  would  say,  "that  we  can't  meet 
you  at  five  dollars.  Four  seventy  is  the  best  we 
can  do  on  the  present  market." 

"My  dear  chap,"  said  Mr.  Spillikins,  "that's 
all  right.  After  all,  thirty  cents  isn't  much,  eh 
what?  Dash  it,  old  man,  we  won't  fight  about 
thirty  cents.    How  much  do  you  want?" 

"Well,  at  four  seventy  we'll  take  twenty 
thousand  barrels." 

"By  Jove!"  said  Mr.  Spillikins;  "twenty 
thousand  barrels.  Gad  I  you  want  a  lot,  don't 
you?  Pretty  big  sale,  eh,  for  a  beginner  like 
me?     I  guess  uncle'U  be  tickled  to  death." 

So  tickled  was  he  that  after  a  few  weeks  of 
oil  selling  Mr.  Boulder  urged  Mr.  Spillikins 
to  retire,  and  wrote  off  many  thousand  dollars 
from  the  capital  value  of  his  estate. 

So  after  this  there  was  only  one  thing  for 
Mr.  Spillikins  to  do,  and  everybody  told  him  so 
— namely,  to  get  married. 

"Spillikins,"  said  his  friends  at  the  club 
after  they  had  taken  all  his  loose  money  over 
the  card  table,  "you  ought  to  get  married." 

"Think  so?"  said  Mr.  Spillikins. 

Goodness  knows  he  was  willing  enough.  In 
fact,  up  to  this  point  Mr.  Spillikins's  whole 

i6a 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

existence  had  been  one  long  aspiring  sigh  di- 
rected towards  the  joys  of  matrimony. 

In  his  brief  college  days  his  timid  glances  had 
wandered  by  an  irresistible  attraction  towards 
the  seats  on  the  right-hand  side  of  the  class- 
room, where  the  girls  of  the  first  year  sat,  with 
golden  pigtails  down  their  backs,  doing  trigo- 
nometry. 

He  would  have  married  any  of  them.  But 
when  a  girl  can  work  out  trigonometry  at  sight, 
what  use  can  she  possibly  have  for  marriage? 
None.  Mr.  Spillikins  knew  this  and  it  kept  him 
silent.  And  even  when  the  most  beautiful  girl 
in  the  class  married  the  demonstrator  and  thus 
terminated  her  studies  in  her  second  year.  Spil- 
likins realised  that  it  was  only  because  the  man 
was,  undeniably,  a  demonstrator  and  knew 
things. 

Later  on,  when  Spillikins  went  into  business 
and  into  society,  the  same  fate  pursued  him. 
He  loved,  for  at  least  six  months,  Georgiana 
McTeague,  the  niece  of  the  presbyterian  min- 
ister of  St.  Osoph's.  He  loved  her  so  well  that 
for  her  sake  he  temporarily  abandoned  his  pew 
at  St.  Asaph's,  which  was  episcopalian,  and  lis- 
tened to  fourteen  consecutive  sermons  on  hell. 
But  the  affair  got  no  further  than  that.  Once 
or  twice,  indeed.  Spillikins  walked  home  with 
Georgiana  from  church  and  talked  about  hell 
with  her ;  and  once  her  uncle  asked  him  into  the 

163 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

manse  for  cold  supper  after  evening  service, 
and  they  had  a  long  talk  about  hell  all  through 
the  meal  and  upstairs  in  the  sitting-room  after- 
wards. But  somehow  Spillikins  could  get  no 
further  with  it.  He  read  up  all  he  could  about 
hell  so  as  to  be  able  to  talk  with  Georgiana, 
but  in  the  end  it  failed :  a  young  minister  fresh 
from  college  came  and  preached  at  St.  Osoph's 
six  special  sermons  on  the  absolute  certainty  of 
eternal  punishment,  and  he  married  Miss  Mc- 
Teague  as  a  result  of  it. 

And  meantime  Mr.  Spillikins  had  got  en- 
gaged, or  practically  so,  to  Adelina  Lightleigh; 
not  that  he  had  spoken  to  her,  but  he  considered 
himself  bound  to  her.  For  her  sake  he  had 
given  up  hell  altogether,  and  was  dancing  till 
two  in  the  morning  and  studying  auction  bridge 
out  of  a  book.  For  a  time  he  felt  so  sure  that 
she  meant  to  have  him  that  he  began  bringing 
his  greatest  friend,  Edward  Ruff,  of  the  college 
football  team,  of  whom  Spillikins  was  very 
proud,  up  to  the  Lightleighs'  residence.  He 
specially  wanted  Adelina  and  Edward  to  be 
great  friends,  so  that  Adelina  and  he  might  ask 
Edward  up  to  the  house  after  he  was  married. 
And  they  got  to  be  such  great  friends,  and  so 
quickly,  that  they  were  married  in  New  York 
that  autumn.  After  which  Spillikins  used  to 
be  invited  up  to  the  house  by  Edward  and 
Adelina.    They  both  used  to  tell  him  how  much 

164 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

they  owed  him;  and  they  too  used  to  join  in  the 
chorus  and  say,  "You  know,  Peter,  you're  aw- 
fully silly  not  to  get  married." 

Now  all  this  had  happened  and  finished  at 
about  the  time  when  the  Yahi-Bahi  Society  ran 
its  course.  At  its  first  meeting  Mr.  Spillikins 
had  met  Dulphemia  Rasselyer-Brown.  At  the 
very  sight  of  her  he  began  reading  up  the  life 
of  Buddha  and  a  translation  of  the  Upanishads 
so  as  to  fit  himself  to  aspire  to  live  with  her. 
Even  when  the  society  ended  in  disaster  Mr. 
Spillikins's  love  only  burned  the  stronger.  Con- 
sequently, as  soon  as  he  knew  that  Mr.  and 
Mrs.  Rasselyer-Brown  were  going  away  for 
the  summer,  and  that  Dulphemia  was  to  go  to 
stay  with  the  Newberrys  at  Castel  Casteggio, 
this  latter  place,  the  summer  retreat  of  the 
Newberrys,  became  the  one  spot  on  earth  for 
Mr.  Peter  Spillikins. 

Naturally,  therefore,  Mr.  Spillikins  was 
presently  transported  to  the  seventh  heaven 
when  in  due  course  of  time  he  received  a  note 
which  said,  "We  shall  be  so  pleased  if  you  can 
come  out  and  spend  a  week  or  two  with  us  here. 
We  will  send  the  car  down  to  the  Thursday 
train  to  meet  you.  We  live  here  in  the  simplest 
fashion  possible ;  in  fact,  as  Mr.  Newberry  says, 
we  are  just  roughing  it,  but  I  am  sure  you  don't 
mind  for  a  change.  Dulphemia  is  with  us,  but 
we  are  quite  a  small  party." 

i6s 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

The  note  was  signed  "Margaret  Newberry" 
and  was  written  on  heavy  cream  paper  with  a 
silver  monogram  such  as  people  use  when 
roughing  it. 

The  Newberrys,  like  everybody  else,  went 
away  from  town  in  the  summer-time.  Mr. 
Newberry  being  still  in  business,  after  a  fash- 
ion, it  would  not  have  looked  well  for  him  to 
remain  in  town  throughout  the  year.  It  would 
have  created  a  bad  impression  on  the  market 
as  to  how  much  he  was  making. 

In  fact,  in  the  early  summer  everybody  went 
out  of  town.  The  few  who  ever  revisited  the 
place  in  August  reported  that  they  hadn't  seen 
a  soul  on  the  street. 

It  was  a  sort  of  longing  for  the  simple  life, 
for  nature,  that  came  over  everybody.  Some 
people  sought  it  at  the  seaside,  where  nature 
had  thrown  out  her  broad  plank  walks  and  her 
long  piers  and  her  vaudeville  shows.  Others 
sought  it  in  the  heart  of  the  country,  where 
nature  had  spread  her  oiled  motor  roads  and 
her  wayside  inns.  Others,  like  the  Newberrys, 
preferred  to  "rough  it"  in  country  residences 
of  their  own. 

Some  of  the  people,  as  already  said,  went  for 
business  reasons,  to  avoid  the  suspicion  of  hav- 
ing to  work  all  the  year  round.  Others  went 
to  Europe  to  avoid  the  reproach  of  living  al- 

i66 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

ways  in  America.  Others,  perhaps  most  people, 
went  for  medical  reasons,  being  sent  away  by 
their  doctors.  Not  that  they  were  ill;  but  the 
doctors  of  Plutoria  Avenue,  such  as  Doctor 
Slyder,  always  preferred  to  send  all  their  pa- 
tients out  of  town  during  the  summer  months. 
No  well-to-do  doctor  cares  to  be  bothered  with 
them.  And  of  course  patients,  even  when  they 
are  anxious  to  go  anywhere  on  their  own  ac- 
count, much  prefer  to  be  sent  there  by  their 
doctor. 

"My  dear  madam,"  Dr.  Slyder  would  say 
to  a  lady  who,  as  he  knew,  was  most  anxious  to 
go  to  Virginia,  "there's  really  nothing  I  can  do 
for  you."  Here  he  spoke  the  truth.  "It's  not 
a  case  of  treatment.  It's  simply  a  matter  of 
dropping  everything  and  going  away.  Now 
why  don't  you  go  for  a  month  or  two  to  some 
quiet  place,  where  you  will  simply  do  nothing?'* 
(She  never,  as  he  knew,  did  anything,  anyway.) 
"What  do  you  say  to  Hot  Springs,  Virginia? — 
absolute  quiet,  good  golf,  not  a  soul  there, 
plenty  of  tennis."  Or  else  he  would  say,  "My 
dear  madam,  you're  simply  worn  out.  Why 
don't  you  just  drop  everything  and  go  to  Can- 
ada?— perfectly  quiet,  not  a  soul  there,  and,  I 
believe,  nowadays  quite  fashionable." 

Thus,  after  all  the  patients  had  been  sent 
away.  Dr.  Slyder  and  his  colleagues  of  Plu- 
toria Avenue  managed  to  slip  away  themselves 

167 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

for  a  month  or  two,  heading  straight  for  Paris 
and  Vienna.  There  they  were  able,  so  they 
said,  to  keep  in  touch  with  what  continental 
doctors  were  doing.    They  probably  were. 

Now  it  so  happened  that  both  the  parents  of 
Miss  Dulphemia  Rasselyer-Brown  had  been 
sent  out  of  town  in  this  fashion.  Mrs.  Rassel- 
yer-Brown's  distressing  experience  with  Yahi- 
Bahi  had  left  her  in  a  condition  in  which  she 
was  utterly  fit  for  nothing,  except  to  go  on  a 
Mediterranean  cruise,  with  about  eighty  other 
people  also  fit  for  nothing. 

Mr.  Rasselyer-Brown  himself,  though  never 
exactly  an  invalid,  had  confessed  that  after  all 
the  fuss  of  the  Yahi-Bahi  business  he  needed 
bracing  up,  needed  putting  into  shape,  and  had 
put  himself  Into  Dr.  Slyder's  hands.  The  doc- 
tor had  examined  him,  questioned  him  search- 
ingly  as  to  what  he  drank,  and  ended  by  pre- 
scribing port  wine  to  be  taken  firmly  and 
unflinchingly  during  the  evening,  and  for  the 
daytime,  at  any  moment  of  exhaustion,  a  light 
cordial  such  as  rye  whiskey,  or  rum  and  Vichy 
water.  In  addition  to  which  Dr.  Slyder  had 
recommended  Mr.  Rasselyer-Brown  to  leave 
town. 

"Why  don't  you  go  down  to  Nagahakett  on 
the  Atlantic?"  he  said. 

"Is  that  in  Maine?"  said  Mr.  Rasselyer- 
Brown  in  horror. 

i6B 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

"Oh,  dear  me,  no  I"  answered  the  doctor 
reassuringly.  "It's  in  New  Brunswick,  Can- 
ada; excellent  place,  most  liberal  license  laws; 
first  class  cuisine  and  bar  in  the  hotel.  No 
tourists,  no  golf,  too  cold  to  swim — just  the 
place  to  enjoy  oneself." 

So  Mr.  Rasselyer-Brown  had  gone  away  also, 
and  as  a  result  Dulphemia  Rasselyer-Brown,  at 
the  particular  moment  of  which  we  speak,  was 
declared  by  the  Boudoir  and  Society  column  of 
the  Plutorian  Daily  Dollar  to  be  staying  with 
Mr.  and  Mrs.  Newberry  at  their  charming  re- 
treat, Castel  Casteggio. 

The  Newberrys  belonged  to  the  class  of  peo- 
ple whose  one  aim  in  the  summer  is  to  lead  the 
simple  life.  Mr.  Newberry  himself  said  that 
his  one  idea  of  a  vacation  was  to  get  right  out 
into  the  bush,  and  put  on  old  clothes,  and  just 
eat  when  he  felt  like  it. 

This  was  why  he  had  built  Castel  Casteggio. 
It  stood  about  forty  miles  from  the  city,  out 
among  the  wooded  hills  on  the  shore  of  a  little 
lake.  Except  for  the  fifteen  or  twenty  resi- 
dences like  it  that  dotted  the  sides  of  the  lake, 
it  was  entirely  isolated.  The  only  way  to  reach 
it  was  by  the  motor  road  that  wound  its  way 
among  leafy  hills  from  the  railway  station  fif- 
teen miles  away.  Every  foot  of  the  road  was 
private  property,  as  all  nature  ought  to  be. 
The  whole  country  about  Castel  Casteggio  was 

169 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

absolutely  primeval,  or  at  any  rate  as  primeval 
as  Scotch  gardeners  and  French  landscape  art- 
ists could  make  it.  The  lake  itself  lay  like  a 
sparkling  gem  from  nature's  workshop — ex- 
cept that  they  had  raised  the  level  of  it  ten  feet, 
stone-banked  the  sides,  cleared  out  the  brush, 
and  put  a  motor  road  round  it.  Beyond  that 
it  was  pure  nature. 

Castel  Casteggio  itself,  a  beautiful  house  of 
white  brick  with  sweeping  piazzas  and  glitter- 
ing conservatories,  standing  among  great  trees 
with  rolling  lawns  broken  with  flower-beds  as 
the  ground  sloped  to  the  lake,  was  perhaps  the 
most  beautiful  house  of  all ;  at  any  rate,  it  was 
an  ideal  spot  to  wear  old  clothes  in,  to  dine 
early  (at  7.30)  and,  except  for  tennis  parties, 
motor  boat  parties,  lawn  teas,  and  golf,  to  live 
absolutely  to  oneself. 

It  should  be  explained  that  the  house  was  not 
called  Castel  Casteggio  because  the  Newberrys 
were  Italian:  they  were  not;  nor  because  they 
owned  estates  in  Italy:  they  didn't;  nor  had 
travelled  there:  they  hadn't.  Indeed,  for  a 
time  they  had  thought  of  giving  it  a  Welsh 
name,  or  a  Scotch.  But  the  beautiful  country 
residence  of  the  Asterisk-Thomsons  that  stood 
close  by  in  the  same  primeval  country  was  al- 
ready called  Pennygw-rydd,  and  the  woodland 
retreat  of  the  Hjrphen- Joneses  just  across  the 
little  lake  was  called  Strathythan-na-Clee,  and 

170 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

the  charming  chalet  of  the  Wilson-Smiths  was 
called  Yodel-Dudel ;  so  it  seemed  fairer  to  select 
an  Italian  name. 

•  •  •  •  • 

"By  Jove  I  Miss  Furlong,  how  awfully  good 
of  you  to  come  downl" 

The  little  suburban  train — two  cars  only, 
both  first  class,  for  the  train  went  nowhere  ex- 
cept out  into  the  primeval  wilderness — had 
drawn  up  at  the  diminutive  roadside  station. 
Mr.  Spillikins  had  alighted,  and  there  was  Miss 
Philippa  Furlong  sitting  behind  the  chauffeur 
in  the  Newberrys'  motor.  She  was  looking  as 
beautiful  as  only  the  younger  sister  of  a  High 
Church  episcopalian  rector  can  look,  dressed 
in  white,  the  colour  of  saintliness,  on  a  beauti- 
ful morning  in  July. 

There  was  no  doubt  about  Philippa  Furlong.' 
Her  beauty  was  of  that  peculiar  and  almost 
sacred  kind  found  only  in  the  immediate  neigh- 
bourhood of  the  High  Church  clergy.  It  was 
admitted  by  all  who  envied  or  admired  her  that 
she  could  enter  a  church  more  gracefully,  move 
more  swimmingly  up  the  aisle,  and  pray  better 
than  any  girl  on  Plutoria  Avenue. 

Mr.  Spillikins,  as  he  gazed  at  her  in  her  white 
summer  dress  and  wide  picture  hat,  with  her 
parasol  nodding  above  her  head,  realised  that 
after  all,  religion,  as  embodied  in  the  younger 

171 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

sisters  of  the  High  Church  clergy,  fills  a  great 
place  in  the  world. 

"By  Jove  I"  he  repeated,  "how  awfully  good 
of  you  I" 

"Not  a  bit,"  said  Philippa.  "Hop  in.  Dul- 
phemia  was  coming,  but  she  couldn't.  Is  that 
all  you  have  with  you?" 

The  last  remark  was  ironical.  It  referred  to 
the  two  quite  large  steamer  trunks  of  Mr.  Spilli- 
kins that  were  being  loaded,  together  with  his 
suit-case,  tennis  racket,  and  golf  kit,  on  to  the 
fore  part  of  the  motor.  Mr.  Spillikins,  as  a 
young  man  of  social  experience,  had  roughed  it 
before.  He  knew  what  a  lot  of  clothes  one 
needs  for  it. 

So  the  motor  sped  away,  and  went  bowling 
noiselessly  over  the  oiled  road,  and  turning 
corners  where  the  green  boughs  of  the  great 
trees  almost  swished  in  their  faces,  and  round- 
ing and  twisting  among  curves  of  the  hills  as  it 
carried  Spillikins  and  Philippa  away  from  the 
lower  domain  or  ordinary  fields  and  farms  up 
into  the  enchanted  country  of  private  property 
and  the  magic  castles  of  Casteggio  and  Penny- 
gw-rydd. 

Mr.  Spillikins  must  have  assured  Philippa  at 
least  a  dozen  times  in  starting  off  how  awfully 
good  it  was  of  her  to  come  down  in  the  motor; 
and  he  was  so  pleased  at  her  coming  to  meet  him 
that  Philippa  never  even  hinted  that  the  truth 

173 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

was  that  she  had  expected  somebody  else  on  the 
same  train.  For  to  a  girl  brought  up  in  the 
principles  of  the  High  Church  the  truth  is  a 
very  sacred  thing.    She  keeps  it  to  herself. 

And  naturally,  with  such  a  sympathetic  lis- 
tener, it  was  not  long  before  Mr.  Spillilcins  had 
begun  to  talk  of  Dulphemia  and  his  hopes. 

"I  don't  know  whether  she  really  cares  for 
me  or  not,"  said  Mr.  Spillikins,  "but  I  have 
pretty  good  hope.  The  other  day,  or  at  least 
about  two  months  ago,  at  one  of  the  Yahi- 
Bahi  meetings — you  were  not  in  that,  were 
you?"  he  said,  breaking  off. 

"Only  just  at  the  beginning,"  said  Philippa; 
"we  went  to  Bermuda." 

"Oh  yes,  I  remember.  Do  you  know,  I 
thought  it  pretty  rough  at  the  end,  especially 
on  Ram  Spudd.  I  liked  him.  I  sent  him  two 
pounds  of  tobacco  to  the  penitentiary  last  week; 
you  can  get  it  in  to  them,  you  know,  if  you  know 
how." 

"But  what  were  you  going  to  say?"  asked 
Philippa. 

"Oh  yes,"  said  Mr.  Spillikins.  And  he  re- 
alised that  he  had  actually  drifted  off  the  topic 
of  Dulphemia,  a  thing  that  had  never  happened 
to  him  before.  "I  was  going  to  say  that  at  one 
of  the  meetings,  you  know,  I  asked  her  if  I 
might  call  her  Dulphemia." 
173 


V 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

"And  what  did  she  say  to  that?"  asked 
Philippa. 

"She  said  she  didn't  care  what  I  called  her. 
So  I  think  that  looks  pretty  good,  don't  you?" 

"Awfully  good,"  said  Philippa. 

"And  a  little  after  that  I  took  her  slippers 
home  from  the  Charity  Ball  at  the  Grand  Pala- 
ver. Archie  Jones  took  her  home  herself  in 
his  car,  but  I  took  her  slippers.  She'd  forgot- 
ten them.  I  thought  that  a  pretty  good  sign, 
wasn't  it?  You  wouldn't  let  a  chap  carry  round 
your  slippers  unless  you  knew  him  pretty  well, 
would  you.  Miss  Philippa?" 

"Oh  no,  nobody  would,"  said  Philippa.  This, 
of  course,  was  a  standing  principle  of  the  Angli- 
can Church. 

"And  a  little  after  that  Dulphemia  and 
Charlie  Mostyn  and  I  were  walking  to  Mrs. 
Buncomhearst's  musical,  and  we'd  only  just 
started  along  the  street,  when  she  stopped  and 
sent  me  back  for  her  music — me,  mind  you,  not 
Charlie.    That  seems  to  me  awfully  significant." 

"It  seems  to  speak  volumes,"  said  Philippa. 

"Doesn't  it?"  said  Mr.  Spillikins.^  "You 
don't  mind  my  telling  you  all  about  this.  Miss 
Philippa?"  he  added. 

Incidentally  Mr.  Spillikins  felt  that  it  was  all 
right  to  call  her  Miss  Philippa,  because  she  had 
a  sister  who  was  really  Miss  Furlong,  so  it 
would  have  been  quite  wrong,  as  Mr.  Spilli- 

174 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

kins  realised,  to  have  called  Miss  Phillppa  by 
her  surname.  In  any  case,  the  beauty  of  the 
morning  was  against  it. 

"I  don't  mind  a  bit,"  said  Philippa.  "I  think 
it's  awfully  nice  of  you  to  tell  me  about  it." 

She  didn't  add  that  she  knew  all  about  it 
already. 

"You  see,"  said  Mr.  Spillikins,  "you're  so 
awfully  sympathetic.  It  makes  it  so  easy  to  talk 
to  you.  With  other  girls,  especially  with  clever 
ones,  even  with  Dulphemia,  I  often  feel  a  per- 
fect jackass  beside  them.  But  I  don't  feel  that 
way  with  you  at  all." 

"Don't  you  really?"  said  Philippa,  but  the 
honest  admiration  in  Mr.  Spillikins's  protruding 
blue  eyes  forbade  a  sarcastic  answer. 

"By  Jove!"  said  Mr.  Spillikins  presently, 
with  complete  irrelevance,  "I  hope  you  don't 
mind  my  saying  it,  but  you  look  awfully  well  in 
white — stunning."  He  felt  that  a  man  who  was 
affianced,  or  practically  so,  was  allowed  the 
smaller  liberty  of  paying  honest  compliments. 

"Oh,  this  old  thing,"  laughed  Philippa,  with 
a  contemptuous  shake  of  her  dress.  "But  up 
here,  you  know,  we  just  wear  anything."  She 
didn't  say  that  this  old  thing  was  only  two 
weeks  old  and  had  cost  eighty  dollars,  or  the 
equivalent  of  one  person's  pew  rent  at  St. 
Asaph's  for  six  months. 

And  after  that  they  had  only  time,  so  it 
175 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

seemed  to  Mr.  Spillikins,  for  two  or  three  re- 
marks, and  he  had  scarcely  had  leisure  to  re- 
flect what  a  charming  girl  Philippa  had  grown 
to  be  since  she  went  to  Bermuda — the  effect,  no 
doubt,  of  the  climate  of  those  fortunate  islands 
— when  quite  suddenly  they  rounded  a  curve 
into  an  avenue  of  nodding  trees,  and  there  were 
the  great  lawn  and  wide  piazzas  and  the  con- 
servatories of  Castel  Casteggio  right  in  front 
of  them. 

"Here  we  are,"  said  Philippa,  "and  there's 
Mr.  Newberry  out  on  the  lawn." 

"Now,  here,"  Mr.  Newberry  was  saying  a 
little  later,  waving  his  hand,  "is  where  you  get 
what  I  think  the  finest  view  of  the  place." 

He  was  standing  at  the  corner  of  the  lawn 
where  it  sloped,  dotted  with  great  trees,  to  the 
banks  of  the  little  lake,  and  was  showing  Mr. 
Spillikins  the  beauties  of  Castel  Casteggio. 

Mr.  Newberry  wore  on  his  short  circular 
person  the  summer  costume  of  a  man  taking 
his  ease  and  careless  of  dress :  plain  white  flan- 
nel trousers,  not  worth  more  than  six  dollars  a 
leg,  an  ordinary  white  silk  shirt  with  a  rolled 
collar,  that  couldn't  have  cost  more  than  fifteen 
dollars,  and  on  his  head  an  ordinary  Panama 
hat,  say  forty  dollars. 

"By  Jove  I"  said  Mr.  Spillikins,  as  he  looked 
176 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

about  him  at  the  house  and  the  beautiful  lawn 
with  its  great  trees,  "it's  a  lovely  place." 

"Isn't  it?"  said  Mr.  Newberry.  "But  you 
ought  to  have  seen  it  when  I  took  hold  of  it. 
To  make  the  motor  road  alone  I  had  to  dyna- 
mite out  about  a  hundred  yards  of  rock,  and 
then  I  fetched  up  cement,  tons  and  tons  of  it, 
and  boulders  to  buttress  the  embankment." 

"Did  you  really!"  said  Mr.  Spillikins,  look- 
ing at  Mr.  Newberry  with  great  respect. 

"Yes,  and  even  that  was  nothing  to  the  house 
itself.  Do  you  know,  I  had  to  go  at  least  forty 
feet  for  the  foundations.  First  I  went  through 
about  twenty  feet  of  loose  clay,  after  that  I 
struck  sand,  and  I'd  no  sooner  got  through  that 
than,  by  George  I  I  landed  in  eight  feet  of 
water.  I  had  to  pump  it  out;  I  think  I  took  out 
a  thousand  gallons  before  I  got  clear  down  to 
the  rock.  Then  I  took  my  solid  steel  beams  in 
fifty-foot  lengths,"  here  Mr.  Newberry  imi- 
tated with  his  arms  the  action  of  a  man  setting 
up  a  steel  beam,  "and  set  them  upright  and 
bolted  them  on  the  rock.  After  that  I  threw  my 
steel  girders  across,  clapped  on  my  roof  rafters, 
all  steel,  in  sixty-foot  pieces,  and  then  just  held 
it  easily,  just  supported  it  a  bit,  and  let  it  sink 
gradually  to  its  place." 

Mr.  Newberry  illustrated  with  his  two  arms 
the  action  of  a  huge  house  being  allowed  to  sink 
slowly  to  a  firm  rest. 

177 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

"You  don't  say  so  I"  said  Mr.  Spillikins,  lost 
in  amazement  at  the  wonderful  physical 
strength  that  Mr.  Newberry  must  have. 

"Excuse  me  just  a  minute,"  broke  off  Mr. 
Newberry,  "while  I  smooth  out  the  gravel 
where  you're  standing.  You've  rather  dis- 
turbed it,  I'm  afraid." 

"Oh,  I'm  awfully  sorry,"  said  Mr.  Spillikins. 

"Oh,  not  at  all,  not  at  all,"  said  his  host.  "I 
don't  mind  in  the  least.  It's  only  on  account  of 
McAlister"." 

"Who?"  asked  Mr.  Spillikins. . 

"My  gardener.  He  doesn't  care  to  have  us 
walk  on  the  gravel  paths.  It  scuffs  up  the 
gravel  so.    But  sometimes  one  forgets." 

It  should  be  said  here,  for  the  sake  of  clear- 
ness, that  one  of  the  chief  glories  of  Castel 
Casteggio  lay  in  its  servants.  All  of  them,  it 
goes  without  saying,  had  been  brought  from 
Great  Britain.  The  comfort  they  gave  to  Mr. 
and  Mrs.  Newberry  was  unspeakable.  In  fact, 
as  they  themselves  admitted,  servants  of  the 
kind  are  simply  not  to  be  found  in  America. 

"Our  Scotch  gardener,"  Mrs.  Newberry  al- 
ways explained,  "is  a  perfect  character.  I  don't 
know  how  we  could  get  another  like  him.  Do 
you  know,  my  dear,  he  simply  won't  allow  us 
to  pick  the  roses ;  and  if  any  of  us  walk  across 
the  grass  he  is  furious.  And  he  positively  re- 
fuses to  let  us  use  the  vegetables.    He  told  me 

ITS 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

quite  plainly  that  if  we  took  any  of  his  young 
peas  or  his  early  cucumbers  he  would  leave. 
We  are  to  have  them  later  on  when  he's  finished 
growing  them." 

"How  delightful  it  is  to  have  servants  of  that 
sort,"  the  lady  addressed  would  murmur;  "so 
devoted  and  so  different  from  servants  on  this 
side  of  the  water.  Just  imagine,  my  dear,  my 
chauffeur,  when  I  was  in  Colorado,  actually 
threatened  to  leave  me  merely  because  I  wanted 
to  reduce  his  wages.  I  think  it's  these  wretched 
labour  unions." 

"I'm  sure  it  is.  Of  course  we  have  trouble 
with  McAlister  at  times,  but  he's  always  very 
reasonable  when  we  put  things  in  the  right  light. 
Last  week,  for  example,  I  was  afraid  that  we 
had  gone  too  far  with  him.  He  is  always  ac- 
customed to  have  a  quart  of  beer  every  morn- 
ing at  half-past  ten — the  maids  are  told  to 
bring  it  out  to  him,  and  after  that  he  goes  to 
sleep  in  the  little  arbour  beside  the  tulip  bed. 
And  the  other  day  when  he  went  there  he 
found  that  one  of  our  guests  who  hadn't  been 
told,  was  actually  sitting  in  there  reading.  Of 
course  he  was  furious.  I  was  afraid  for  the 
moment  that  he  would  give  notice  on  the  spot." 

"What  would  you  have  done?" 

"Positively,  my  dear,  I  don't  know.  But  we 
explained  to  him  at  once  that  it  was  only  an 
accident  and  that  the  person  hadn't  known  and 

179 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

that  of  course  it  wouldn't  occur  again.  After 
that  he  was  softened  a  little,  but  he  went  off 
muttering  to  himself,  and  that  evening  he  dug 
up  all  the  new  tulips  and  threw  them  over  the 
fence.  We  saw  him  do  it,  but  we  didn't  dare 
say  anything." 

"Oh  no,"  echoed  the  other  lady;  "if  you  had 
you  might  have  lost  him." 

"Exactly.  And  I  don't  think  we  could  pos- 
sibly get  another  man  like  him;  at  least,  not  on 
this  side  of  the  water." 

•  •  •  • 

"But  come,"  said  Mr.  Newberry,  after  he 
had  finished  adjusting  the  gravel  with  his  foot, 
"there  are  Mrs.  Newberry  and  the  girls  on  the 
verandah.     Let's  go  and  join  them." 

A  few  minutes  later  Mr.  Spillikins  was  talk- 
ing with  Mrs.  Newberry  and  Dulphemia  Ras- 
selyer-Brown,  and  telling  Mrs.  Newberry  what 
a  beautiful  house  she  had.  Beside  them  stood 
Philippa  Furlong,  and  she  had  her  arm  around 
Dulphemia's  waist;  and  the  picture  that  they 
thus  made,  with  their  heads  close  together, 
Dulphemia's  hair  being  golden  and  Philippa's 
chestnut-brown,  was  such  that  Mr.  Spillikins 
had  no  eyes  for  Mrs.  Newberry  nor  for  Castel 
Casteggio  nor  for  anything.  So  much  so  that 
he  practically  didn't  see  at  all  the  little  girl  in 
green  that  stood  unobtrusively  on  the  further 
side  of  Mrs.  Newberry.    Indeed,  though  some- 

i8o 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

body  had  murmured  her  name  in  introduction, 
he  couldn't  have  repeated  it  if  asked  two  min- 
utes afterwards.  His  eyes  and  his  mind  were 
elsewhere. 

But  hers  were  not. 

For  the  Little  Girl  in  Green  looked  at  Mr. 
Spillikins  with  wide  eyes,  and  when  she  looked 
at  him  she  saw  all  at  once  such  wonderful 
things  about  him  as  nobody  had  ever  seen  be- 
fore. 

For  she  could  see  from  the  poise  of  his  head 
how  awfully  clever  he  was;  and  from  the  way 
he  stood  with  his  hands  in  his  side  pockets  she 
could  see  how  manly  and  brave  he  must  be ;  and 
of  course  there  was  firmness  and  strength  writ- 
ten all  over  him.  In  short,  she  saw  as  she 
looked  such  a  Peter  Spillikins  as  truly  never 
existed,  or  could  exist — or  at  least  such  a  Peter 
Spillikins  as  no  one  else  in  the  world  had  ever 
suspected  before. 

All  in  a  moment  she  was  ever  so  glad  that 
she  accepted  Mrs.  Newberry's  invitation  to 
Castel  Casteggio  and  hadn't  been  afraid  to 
come.  For  the  Little  Girl  in  Green,  whose 
Christian  name  was  Norah,  was  only  what  is 
called  a  poor  relation  of  Mrs.  Newberry,  and 
her  father  was  a  person  of  no  account  what- 
ever, who  didn't  belong  to  the  Mausoleum  Club 
or  to  any  other  club,  and  who  lived,  with  Norah, 
on  a  street  that  nobody  who  was  anybody  lived 

i8i 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

upon.  Norah  had  been  asked  up  a  few  days 
before  out  of  the  City  to  give  her  air — which 
is  the  only  thing  that  can  be  safely  and  freely 
given  to  poor  relations.  Thus  she  had  arrived 
at  Castel  Casteggio  with  one  diminutive  trunk, 
so  small  and  shabby  that  even  the  servants  who 
carried  it  upstairs  were  ashamed  of  it.  In  it 
were  a  pair  of  brand  new  tennis  shoes  (at 
ninety  cents  reduced  to  seventy-five,  and  a  white 
dress  of  the  kind  that  is  called  "almost  even- 
ing," and  such  few  other  things  as  poor  rela- 
tions might  bring  with  fear  and  trembling  to 
join  in  the  simple  rusticity  of  the  rich. 

Thus  stood  Norah  looking  at  Mr.  Spillikins. 

As  for  him,  such  is  the  contrariety  of  human 
things,  he  had  no  eyes  for  her  at  all. 

"What  a  perfectly  charming  house  this  is," 
Mr.  Spillikins  was  saying.  He  always  said 
this  on  such  occasions,  but  it  seemed  to  the 
Little  Girl  in  Green  that  he  spoke  with  wonder- 
ful social  ease. 

"I  am  so  glad  you  think  so,"  said  Mrs.  New- 
berry (this  was  what  she  always  answered)  ; 
"youVe  no  idea  what  work  it  has  been.  This 
year  we  put  in  all  this  new  glass  in  the  east  con- 
servatory, over  a  thousand  panes.  Such  a  tre- 
mendous business!" 

"I  was  just  telling  Mr.  Spillikins,"  said  Mr. 
Newberry,  "about  the  work  we  had  blasting 
out  the  motor  road.    You  can  see  the  gap  where 

182 


Arcadian  'Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

it  lies  better  from  here,  I  think,  Spillikins.  I 
must  have  exploded  a  ton  and  a  half  of  dyna- 
mite on  it." 

"By  Jove!"  said  Mr.  Spillikins;  "it  must  be 
dangerous  work,  eh?  I  wonder  you  aren't 
afraid  of  it." 

"One  simply  gets  used  to  it,  that's  all,"  said 
Newberry,  shrugging  his  shoulders;  "but  of. 
course  it  is  dangerous.  I  blew  up  two  Italians 
on  the  last  job."  He  paused  a  minute  and 
added  musingly,  "Hardy  fellows,  the  Italians. 
I  prefer  them  to  any  other  people  for  blasting." 

"Did  you  blow  them  up  yourself?"  asked 
Mr.  Spillikins. 

"I  wasn't  here,"  answered  Mr.  Newberry. 
"In  fact,  I  never  care  to  be  here  when  I'm  blast- 
ing. We  go  to  town.  But  I  had  to  foot  the 
bill  for  them  all  the  same.  Quite  right,  too. 
The  risk,  of  course,  was  mine,  not  theirs;  that's 
the  law,  you  know.  They  cost  me  two  thou- 
sand each." 

"But  come,"  said  Mrs.  Newberry,  "I  think 
we  must  go  and  dress  for  dinner.  Franklin 
will  be  frightfully  put  out  if  we're  late.  Frank- 
lin is  our  butler,"  she  went  on,  seeing  that  Mr. 
Spillikins  didn't  understand  the  reference,  "and 
as  we  brought  him  out  from  England  we  have 
to  be  rather  careful.  With  a  good  man  like 
Franklin  one  is  always  so  afraid  of  losing  him 

183 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

' — and  after  last  night  we  have  to  be  doubly 
careful." 

"Why  last  night?"  asked  Mr.  Spillikins. 

"Oh,  it  wasn't  much,"  said  Mrs.  Newberry. 
"In  fact,  it  was  merely  an  accident.  Only  it 
just  chanced  that  at  dinner,  quite  late  in  the 
meal,  when  we  had  had  nearly  everything  (we 
dine  very  simply  here,  Mr.  Spillikins),  Mr. 
Newberry,  who  was  thirsty  and  who  wasn't 
really  thinking  what  he  was  saying,  asked 
Franklin  to  give  him  a  glass  of  hock.  Franklin 
said  at  once,  'I'm  very  sorry,  sir,  I  don't  care  to 
serve  my  hock  after  the  entree  I" 

"And  of  course  he  was  right,"  said  Dul- 
phemia  with  emphasis. 

"Exactly;  he  was  perfectly  right.  They 
know,  you  know.  We  were  afraid  that  there 
might  be  trouble,  but  Mr.  Newberry  went  and 
saw  Franklin  afterwards  and  he  behaved  very 
well  over  it.  But  suppose  we  go  and  dress? 
It's  half-past  six  already  and  we've  only  an 
hour." 

•  •  •  •  • 

In  this  congenial  company  Mr.  Spillikins 
spent  the  next  three  days. 

Life  at  Castel  Casteggio,  as  the  Newberrys 
loved  to  explain,  was  conducted  on  the  very 
simplest  plan.  Early  breakfast,  country  fash- 
ion, at  nine  o'clock;  after  that  nothing  to  eat 
till  lunch,  unless  one  cared  to  have  lemonade 

184 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

or  bottled  ale  sent  out  with  a  biscuit  or  a  mac- 
aroon to  the  tennis  court.  Lunch"  itself  was  a 
perfectly  plain  midday  meal,  lasting  till  about 
1.30,  and  consisting  simply  of  cold  meats  (say 
four  kinds)  and  salads,  with  perhaps  a  made 
dish  or  two,  and,  for  anybody  who  cared  for 
it,  a  hot  steak  or  a  chop,  or  both.  After  that 
one  had  coffee  and  cigarettes  in  the  shade  of 
the  piazza  and  waited  for  afternoon  tea.  This 
latter  was  served  at  a  wicker  table  in  any  part 
of  the  grounds  that  the  gardener  was  not  at  that 
moment  clipping,  trimming,  or  otherwise  using. 
Afternoon  tea  being  over,  one  rested  or  walked 
on  the  lawn  till  It  was  time  to  dress  for  dinner. 

This  simple  routine  was  broken  only  by  ir- 
ruptions of  people  in  motors  or  motor  boats 
from  Penny-gw-rydd  or  Yodel-Dudel  Chalet. 

The  whole  thing,  from  the  point  of  view  of 
Mr.  Spillikins  or  Dulphemia  or  Philippa,  repre- 
sented rusticity  itself. 

To  the  Little  Girl  in  Green  it  seemed  as  bril- 
liant as  the  Court  of  Versailles ;  especially  even- 
ing dinner — a  plain  home  meal  as  the  others 
thought  it — when  she  had  four  glasses  to  drink 
out  of  and  used  to  wonder  over  such  problems 
as  whether  you  were  supposed,  when  Franklin 
poured  out  wine,  to  tell  him  to  stop  or  to  wait 
till  he  stopped  without  being  told  to  stop;  and 
other  similar  mysteries,  such  as  many  people 
before  and  after  have  meditated  upon. 

i8s 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

During  all  this  time  Mr.  Spillikins  was  nerv- 
ing himself  to  propose  to  Dulphemia  Rassel- 
yer-Brown.  In  fact,  he  spent  part  of  his  time 
walking  up  and  down  under  the  trees  with 
Philippa  Furlong  and  discussing  with  her  the 
proposal  that  he  meant  to  make,  together  with 
such  topics  as  marriage  in  general  and  his  own 
unworthiness. 

He  might  have  waited  indefinitely  had  he  not 
learned,  on  the  third  day  of  his  visit,  that  Dul- 
phemia was  to  go  away  in  the  morning  to  join 
her  father  at  Nagahakett. 

That  evening  he  found  the  necessary  nerve  to 
speak,  and  the  proposal  in  almost  every  aspect 
of  it  was  most  successful. 

"By  Jove!"  Spillikins  said  to  Philippa  Fur- 
long next  morning,  in  explaining  what  had  hap- 
pened, "she  was  awfully  nice  about  it.  T  think 
she  must  have  guessed,  in  a  way,  don't  you, 
what  I  was  going  to  say?  But  at  any  rate  she 
was  awfully  nice — let  me  say  everything  I 
wanted,  and  when  I  explained  what  a  fool  I 
was,  she  said  she  didn't  think  I  was  half  such 
a  fool  as  people  thought  me.  But  it's  all  right. 
It  turns  out  that  she  isn't  thinking  of  getting 
married.  I  asked  her  if  I  might  always  go  on 
thinking  of  her,  and  she  said  I  might." 

And  that  morning  when  Dulphemia  was  car- 
ried off  in  the  motor  to  the  station,  Mr.  Spilli- 
kins, without  exactly  being  aware  how  he  had 

i86 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

done  It,  had  somehow  transferred  himself  to 
Phlllppa. 

"Isn't  she  a  splendid  girl!"  he  said  at  least 
ten  times  a  day  to  Norah,  the  Little  Girl  In 
Green.  And  Norah  always  agreed,  because 
she  really  thought  Phlllppa  a  perfectly  wonder- 
ful creature. 

There  Is  no  doubt  that,  but  for  a  slight  shift 
of  circumstances,  Mr.  Spillikins  would  have 
proposed  to  Miss  Furlong.  Indeed,  he  spent 
a  good  part  of  his  time  rehearsing  little  speeches 
that  began,  "Of  course  I  know  I'm  an  awful  ass 
In  a  way,"  or,  "Of  course  I  know  that  I'm  not 
at  all  the  sort  of  fellow,"  and  so  on. 

But  not  one  of  them  ever  was  delivered. 

For  It  so  happened  that  on  the  Thursday,  one 
week  after  Mr.  SpIUIklns's  arrival,  Phlllppa 
went  again  to  the  station  In  the  motor.  And 
when  she  came  back  there  was  another  pas- 
senger with  her,  a  tall  young  man  In  tweed, 
and  they  both  began  calling  out  to  the  New- 
berrys  from  a  distance  of  at  least  a  hundred 
yards. 

And  both  the  Newberrys  suddenly  exclaimed, 
"Why,  It's  Toml"  and  rushed  off  to  meet  the 
motor.  And  there  was  such  a  laughing  and 
jubilation  as  the  two  descended  and  carried 
Tom's  valises  to  the  verandah,  that  Mr.  Spilli- 
kins felt  as  suddenly  and  completely  out  of  it 
as  the  Little  Girl  in  Green  herself — especially 

187 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

as  his  ear  had  caught,  among  the  first  things 
said,  the  words,  "Congratulate  us,  Mrs.  New- 
berry, we're  engaged." 

After  which  Mr.  Spillikins  had  the  pleasure 
of  sitting  and  listening  while  it  was  explained, 
in  wicker  chairs  on  the  verandah,  that  Philippa 
and  Tom  had  been  engaged  already  for  ever  so 
long — in  fact,  nearly  two  weeks,  only  they  had 
agreed  not  to  say  a  word  to  anybody  till  Tom 
had  gone  to  North  Carolina  and  back,  to  see 
his  people. 

And  as  to  who  Tom  was,  or  what  was  the 
relation  between  Tom  and  the  Newberrys,  Mr. 
Spillikins  neither  knew  nor  cared;  nor  did  it 
interest  him  in  the  least  that  Philippa  had  met 
Tom  In  Bermuda,  and  that  she  hadn't  known 
that  he  even  knew  the  Newberrys,  nor  any 
other  of  the  exuberant  disclosures  of  the  mo- 
ment. In  fact,  if  there  was  any  one  period 
rather  than  another  when  Mr.  Spillikins  felt 
corroborated  in  his  private  view  of  himself, 
it  was  at  this  moment. 

So  the  next  day  Tom  and  Philippa  vanished 
together. 

"We  shall  be  quite  a  small  party  now,"  said 
Mrs.  Newberry;  "in  fact,  quite  by  ourselves 
till  Mrs.  Everleigh  comes,  and  she  won't  be 
here  for  a  fortnight." 

At  which  the  heart  of  the  Little  Girl  in 
Green  was  glad,  because  she  had  been  afraid 

i88 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

that  other  girls  might  be  coming,  whereas  she 
knew  that  Mrs.  Everleigh  was  a  widow  with 
four  sons  and  must  be  ever  so  old,  past  forty. 

The  next  few  days  were  spent  by  Mr.  Spilli- 
kins almost  entirely  in  the  society  of  Norah. 
He  thought  them  on  the  whole  rather  pleasant 
days,  but  slow.  To  her  they  were  an  uninter- 
rupted dream  of  happiness  never  to  be  forgot- 
ten. 

The  Newberrys  left  them  to  themselves ;  not 
with  any  intent; 'it  was  merely  that  they  were 
perpetually  busy  walking  about  the  grounds  of 
Castel  Casteggio,  blowing  up  things  with  dyna- 
mite, throwing  steel  bridges  over  gullies,  and 
hoisting  heavy  timber  with  derricks.  Nor  were 
they  to  blame  for  it.  For  it  had  not  always 
been  theirs  to  command  dynamite  and  control 
the  forces  of  nature.  There  had  been  a  time, 
now  long  ago,  when  the  two  Newberrys  had 
lived,  both  of  them,  on  twenty  dollars  a  week, 
and  Mrs.  Newberry  had  made  her  own  dresses, 
and  Mr.  Newberry  had  spent  vigorous  evenings 
in  making  hand-made  shelves  for  their  sitting- 
room.  That  was  long  ago,  and  since  then  Mr. 
Newberry,  like  many  other  people  of  those 
earlier  days,  had  risen  to  wealth  and  Castel 
Casteggio,  while  others,  like  Norah's  father, 
had  stayed  just  where  they  were. 

So  the  Newberrys  left  Peter  and  Norah  to 
themselves  all  day.  Even  after  dinner,  in  the 
189 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

evening,  Mr.  Newberry  was  very  apt  to  call  to 
his  wife  in  the  dusk  from  some  distant  comer 
of  the  lawn : 

"Margaret,  come  over  here  and  tell  me  if 
you  don't  think  we  might  cut  down  this  elm, 
tear  the  stump  out  by  the  roots,  and  throw  it 
into  the  ravine." 

And  the  answer  was,  "One  minute,  Edward; 
just  wait  till  I  get  a  wrap." 

Before  they  came  back  the  dusk  had  grown 
to  darkness,  and  they  had  redynamited  half  the 
estate. 

During  all  of  which  time  Mr.  Spillikins  sat 
with  Norah  on  the  piazza.  He  talked  and  she 
listened.  He  told  her,  for  instance,  all  about 
his  terrific  experiences  in  the  oil  business,  and 
about  his  exciting  career  at  college;  or  pres- 
ently they  went  indoors  and  Norah  played  the 
piano  and  Mr.  Spillikins  sat  and  smoked  and 
listened.  In  such  a  house  as  the  Newberrys', 
where  dynamite  and  the  greater  explosives  were 
everyday  matters,  a  little  thing  like  the  use  of 
tobacco  in  the  drawing-room  didn't  count.  As 
for  the  music,  "Go  right  ahead,"  said  Mr. 
Spillikins;  "I'm  not  musical,  but  I  don't  mind 
music  a  bit." 

In  the  daytime  they  played  tennis.  There 
was  a  court  at  one  end  of  the  lawn  beneath  the 
trees,  all  chequered  with  sunlight  and  mingled 
shadow ;  very  beautiful,  Norah  thought,  though 

190 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

Mr.  Spillikins  explained  that  the  spotted  light 
put  him  off  his  game.  In  fact,  it  was  owing 
entirely  to  this  bad  light  that  Mr.  Spillikins's 
fast  drives,  wonderful  though  they  were,  some- 
how never  got  inside  the  service  court. 

Norah,  of  course,  thought  Mr.  Spillikins  a 
wonderful  player.  She  was  glad — in  fact.  It 
suited  them  both — when  he  beat  her  six  to 
nothing.  She  didn't  know  and  didn't  care  that 
there  was  no  one  else  in  the  world  that  Mr. 
Spillikins  could  beat  like  that.  Once  he  even 
said  to  her, 

"By  Gad  I  you  don't  play  half  a  bad  game, 
you  know.  I  think,  you  know,  with  practice 
you'd  come  on  quite  a  lot." 

After  that  the  games  were  understood  to  be 
more  or  less  in  the  form  of  lessons,  which  put 
Mr.  Spillikins  on  a  pedestal  of  superiority,  and 
allowed  any  bad  strokes  on  his  part  to  be  viewed 
as  a  form  of  indulgence. 

Also,  as  the  tennis  was  viewed  in  this  light, 
it  was  Norah's  part  to  pick  up  the  balls  at  the 
net  and  throw  them  back  to  Mr.  Spillikins.  He 
let  her  do  this,  not  from  rudeness,  for  it  wasn't 
in  him,  but  because  in  such  a  primeval  place  as 
Castel  Casteggio  the  natural  primitive  relation 
of  the  sexes  is  bound  to  reassert  itself. 

But  of  love  Mr.  Spillikins  never  thought. 
He  had  viewed  it  so  eagerly  and  so  often  from 
a  distance  that  when  it  stood  here  modestly  at 
191 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

his  very  elbow  he  did  not  recognise  its  presence. 
His  mind  had  been  fashioned,  as  it  were,  to 
connect  love  with  something  stunning  and  sen- 
sational, with  Easter  hats  and  harem  skirts  and 
the  luxurious  consciousness  of  the  unattainable. 

Even  at  that,  there  is  no  knowing  what  might 
have  happened.  Tennis,  in  the  chequered  light 
of  sun  and  shadow  cast  by  summer  leaves,  is  a 
dangerous  game.  There  came  a  day  when  they 
were  standing  one  each  side  of  the  net  and  Mr. 
Spillikins  was  explaining  to  Norah  the  proper 
way  to  hold  a  racquet  so  as  to  be  able  to  give 
those  magnificent  backhand  sweeps  of  his,  by 
which  he  generally  drove  the  ball  half-way  to 
the  lake;  and  explaining, this  involved  putting 
his  hand  right  over  Norah's  on  the  handle  of 
the  racquet,  so  that  for  just  half  a  second  her 
hand  was  clasped  tight  in  his;  and  if  that  half- 
second  had  been  lengthened  out  into  a  whole 
second  it  is  quite  possible  that  what  was  already 
subconscious  in  his  mind  would  have  broken  its 
way  triumphantly  to  the  surface,  and  Norah's 
hand  would  have  stayed  in  his-— how  willing- 
ly—  1  for  the  rest  of  their  two  lives. 

But  just  at  that  moment  Mr.  Spillikins  looked 
up,  and  he  said  in  quite  an  altered  tone, 

"By  Jove  I  who's  that  awfully  good-looking 
woman  getting  out  of  the  motor?" 

And  their  hands  unclasped.  Norah  looked 
over  towards  the  house  and  said, 

193 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

"Why,  it's  Mrs.  Everleigh.  I  thought  she 
wasn't  coming  for  another  week." 

"I  say,"  said  Mr.  Spillikins,  straining  his 
short  sight  to  the  uttermost,  "what  perfectly 
wonderful  golden  hair,  eh?" 

"Why,  it's "  Norah  began,  and  then  she 

stopped.     It  didn't  seem  right  to  explain  that 
Mrs.  Everleigh's  hair  was  dyed. 

"And  who's  that  tall  chap  standing  beside 
her?"  said  Mr.  Spillikins. 

"I  think  it's  Captain  Cormorant,  but  I  don*t 
think  he's  going  to  stay.  He's  only  brought 
her  up  in  the  motor  from  town." 

"By  Jove,  how  good  of  himl"  said  Spilli- 
kins; and  this  sentiment  in  regard  to  Captain 
Cormorant,  though  he  didn't  know  it,^  was  to 
become  a  keynote  of  his  existence. 

"I  didn't  know  she  was  coming  so  soon," 
said  Norah,  and  there  was  weariness  already  in 
her  heart.  Certainly  she  didn't  know  it;  still 
less  did  she  know,  or  anyone  else,  that  the  rea- 
son of  Mrs.  Everleigh's  coming  was  because 
Mr.  Spillikins  was  there.  She  came  with  a 
set  purpose,  and  she  sent  Captain  Cormorant 
directly  back  In  the  motor  because  she  didn't 
want  him  on  the  premises. 

"Oughtn't  we  to  go  up  to  the  house?"  said 
Norah. 

"All  right,"  said  Mr.  Spillikins  with  great 
alacrity,  "let's  go." 

193 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

Now  as  this  story  began  with  the  informa- 
tion that  Mrs.  Everleigh  is  at  present  Mrs. 
Everlelgh-Spillikins,  there  is  no  need  to  pur- 
sue in  detail  the  stages  of  Mr.  Spillikins's  woo- 
ing. Its  course  was  swift  and  happy.  Mr. 
Spillikins,  having  seen  the  back  of  Mrs.  Ever- 
leigh's  head,  had  decided  instanter  that  she  was 
the  most  beautiful  woman  in  the  world;  and 
that  impression  is  not  easily  corrected  in  the 
half-light  of  a  shaded  drawing-room;  nor 
across  a  dinner-table  lighted  only  with  candles 
with  deep  red  shades;  nor  even  in  the  daytime 
through  a  veil.  In  any  case,  it  is  only  fair  to 
state  that  if  Mrs.  Everleigh  was  not  and  is  not 
a  singularly  beautiful  woman,  Mr.  Spillikins 
still  doesn't  know  it.  And  in  point  of  attrac- 
tion the  homage  of  such  experts  as  Captain  Cor- 
morant and  Lieutenant  Hawk  speaks  for  itself. 

So  the  course  of  Mr.  Spillikins's  love,  for 
love  it  must  have  been,  ran  swiftly  to  its  goal. 
Each  stage  of  it  was  duly  marked  by  his  com- 
ments to  Norah. 

"She  is  a  splendid  woman,"  he  said,  "so 
sympathetic.  She  always  seems  to  know  just 
what  one's  going  to  say." 

So  she  did,  for  she  was  making  him  say  it. 

"By  Jove!"  he  said  a  day  later,  "Mrs. 
Everleigh's  an  awfully  fine  woman,  isn't  she? 
I  was  telling  her  about  my  having  been  in  the 
oil  business  for  a  little  while,  and  she  thinks 

194 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

that  I'd  really  be  awfully  good  in  money  things. 
She  said  she  wished  she  had  me  to  manage  her 
money  for  her." 

This  also  was  quite  true,  except  that  Mrs. 
Everleigh  had  not  made  it  quite  clear  that  the 
management  of  her  money  was  of  the  form  gen- 
erally known  as  deficit  financing.  In  fact,  her 
money  was,  very  crudely  stated,  non-existent, 
and  it  needed  a  lot  of  management. 

A  day  or  two  later  Mr.  Spillikins  was  say- 
ings "I  think  Mrs.  Everleigh  must  have  had 
great  sorrow,  don't  you?  Yesterday  she  was 
showing  me  a  photograph  of  her  little  boy — 
she  has  a  little  boy,  you  know " 

"Yes,  I  know,"  said  Norah.  She  didn't  add 
that  she  knew  that  Mrs.  Everleigh  had  four. 

" — and  she  was  saying  how  awfully  rough 
it  is  having  to  have  him  always  away  from 
her  at  Dr.  Something's  academy  where  he  is." 

And  very  soon  after  that  Mr.  Spillikins  was 
saying,  with  quite  a  quaver  in  his  voice, 

"By  Jovel  yes,  I'm  awfully  lucky;  I  never 
thought  for  a  moment  that  she'd  have  me,  you 
know — a  woman  like  her,  with  so  much  atten- 
tion and  everything.  I  can't  imagine  what  she 
sees  in  me." 

Which  was  just  as  well. 

And  then  Mr.  Spillikins  checked  himself,  for 
he  noticed — this  was  on  the  verandah  in  the 
morning — that  Norah  had  a  hat  and  jacket  on 

195 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

and  that  the  motor  was  rolling  towards  the 
door. 

"I  say,"  he  said,  "are  you  going  away?" 

"Yes,  didn't  you  know?"  Norah  said.  "I 
thought  you  heard  them  speaking  of  it  at  dinner 
last  night.  I  have  to  go  home ;  father's  alone, 
you  know." 

"Oh,  I'm  awfully  sorry,"  said  Mr.  Spilli- 
kins; "we  shan't  have  any  more  tennis." 

"Good-bye,"  said  Norah,  and  as  she  said  it 
and  put  out  her  hand  there  were  tears  brimming 
up  into  her  eyes.  But  Mr.  Spillikins,  being 
short  of  sight,  didn't  see  them. 

"Good-bye,"  he  said. 

Then  as  the  motor  carried  her  away  he  stood 
for  a  moment  in  a  sort  of  reverie.  Perhaps 
certain  things  that  might  have  been  rose  un- 
formed and  inarticulate  before  his  mind.  And 
then  a  voice  called  from  the  drawing-room 
within,  in  a  measured  and  assured  tone, 

"Peter,  darling,  where  are  you?" 

"Coming,"  cried  Mr.  Spillikins,  and  he  came. 

On  the  second  day  of  the  engagement  Mrs. 
Everleigh  showed  to  Peter  a  little  photograph 
in  a  brooch. 

"This  is  Gib,  my  second  little  boy,"  she 
said. 

Mr.    Spillikins    started    to    say,    "I    didn't 

know "  and  then  checked  himself  and  said, 

196 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

"By  Gad!  what  a  fine-looking  little  chap,  eh? 
I'm  awfully  fond  of  boys." 

"Dear  little  fellow,  isn't  he?"  said  Mrs. 
Everleigh.  "He's  really  rather  taller  than 
that  now,  because  this  picture  was  taken  a  little 
while  ago." 

And  the  next  day  she  said,  "This  is  Willie, 
my  third  boy,"  and  on  the  day  after  that  she 
said,  "This  is  Sib,  my  youngest  boy;  I'm  sure 
you'll  love  him." 

"I'm  sure  I  shall,"  said  Mr.  Spillikins.  He 
loved  him  already  for  being  the  youngest. 

And  so  in  the  fulness  of  time — nor  was  it 
so  very  full  either,  in  fact,  only  about  five 
weeks — Peter  Spillikins  and  Mrs.  Everleigh 
were  married  in  St.  Asaph's  Church  on  Plutoria 
Avenue.  And  the  wedding  was  one  of  the  most 
beautiful  and  sumptuous  of  the  weddings  of 
the  September  season.  There  were  flowers,  and 
bridesmaids  in  long  veils,  and  tall  ushers  in 
frock-coats,  and  awnings  at  the  church  door, 
and  strings  of  motors  with  wedding-favours  on 
imported  chauffeurs,  and  all  that  goes  to  invest 
marriage  on  Plutoria  Avenue  with  its  peculiar 
sacredness.  The  face  of  the  young  rector,  Mr. 
Fareforth  Furlong,  wore  the  added  saintliness 
that  springs  from  a  five-hundred  dollar  fee. 
The  whole  town  was  there,  or  at  least  every- 
body that  was  anybody;  and  if  there  was  one 
197 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

person  absent,  one  who  sat  by  herself  in  the 
darkened  drawing-room  of  a  dull  little  house 
on  a  shabby  street,  who  knew  or  cared? 

So  after  the  ceremony  the  happy  couple — for 
were  they  not  so? — left  for  New  York.  There 
they  spent  their  honeymoon.  They  had  thought 
of  going, — it  was  Mr.  Spillikins's  idea, — to  the 
coast  of  Maine.  But  Mrs.  Everleigh-Spillikins 
said  that  New  York  was  much  nicer,  so  restful, 
whereas,  as  everyone  knows,  the  coast  of  Maine 
is  frightfully  noisy. 

Moreover,  it  so  happened  that  before  the 
Everleigh-Spillikinses  had  been  more  than  four 
or  five  days  in  New  York  the  ship  of  Captain 
Cormorant  dropped  anchor  in  the  Hudson; 
and  when  the  anchor  of  that  ship  was  once 
down  it  generally  stayed  there.  So  the  captain 
was  able  to  take  the  Everleigh-Spillikinses  about 
in  New  York,  and  to  give  a  tea  for  Mrs.  Ever- 
leigh-Spillikins on  the  deck  of  his  vessel  so  that 
she  might  meet  the  officers,  and  another  tea 
in  a  private  room  of  a  restaurant  on  Fifth  Ave- 
nue so  that  she  might  meet  no  one  but  himself. 

And  at  this  tea  Captain  Cormorant  said, 
among  other  things,  "Did  he  kick  up  rough 
at  all  when  you  told  him  about  the  money?" 

And  Mrs.  Everleigh,  now  Mrs.  Everleigh- 
SpiUikins,  said,  "Not  hel  I  think  he  is  actu- 
ally pleased  to  know  that  I  haven't  any.  Do 
you  know,  Arthur,  he's  really  an  awfully  good 

io8 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

fellow,"  and  as  she  said  it  she  moved  her  hand 
away  from  under  Captain  Cormorant's  on  the 
tea-table. 

"I  say,"  said  the  Captain,  "don't  get  senti- 
mental over  him." 

•  •  •  •  • 

So  that  is  how  it  is  that  the  Everleigh-SpIUi- 
kinses  came  to  reside  on  Plutoria  Avenue  in  a 
beautiful  stone  house,  with  the  billiard-room  in 
an  extension  on  the  second  floor.  Through  the 
windows  of  it  one  can  almost  hear  the  click  of 
the  billiard  balls,  and  a  voice  saying,  "  Hold  on, 
father,  you  had  your  shot." 


i» 


Chapter  VI. — The  Rival  Churches  of  St, 
Asaph  and  St.  Osoph 

THE  church  of  St.  Asaph,  more  prop- 
erly called  St.  Asaph's  in  the  Fields, 
stands  among  the  elm  trees  of  Plu' 
toria  Avenue  opposite  the  university, 
its  tall  spire  pointing  to  the  blue  sky.  Its  rector 
is  fond  of  saying  that  it  seems  to  him  to  point, 
as  it  were,  a  warning  against  the  sins  of  a 
commercial  age.  More  particularly  does  he 
say  this  in  his  Lenten  services  at  noonday,  when 
the  business  men  sit  in  front  of  him  in  rows, 
their  bald  heads  uncovered  and  their  faces 
stamped  with  contrition  as  they  think  of  mer- 
gers that  they  should  have  made,  and  real 
estate  that  they  failed  to  buy  for  lack  of  faith. 
The  ground  on  which  St.  Asaph's  stands  is 
worth  seven  dollars  and  a  half  a  foot.  The 
mortgagees,  as  they  kneel  in  prayer  in  their 
long  frock-coats,  feel  that  they  have  built  upon 
a  rock.  It  is  a  beautifully  appointed  church. 
There  are  windows  with  priceless  stained  glass 
that  were  imported  from  Normandy,  the  rector 
himself  swearing  out  the  invoices  to  save  the 
congregation  the  grievous  burden  of  the  cus- 
toms duty.    There  is  a  pipe  organ  in  the  tran- 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

sept  that  cost  ten  thousand  dollars  to  Instal. 
The  debenture-holders,  as  they  join  in  the  morn- 
ing anthem,  love  to  hear  the  dulcet  notes  of  the 
great  organ  and  to  reflect  that  it  is  as  good 
as  new.  Just  behind  the  church  is  St.  Asaph's 
Sunday  School,  with  a  ten-thousand  dollar  mort- 
gage of  its  own.  And  below  that  again,  on  the 
side  street,  is  the  building  of  the  Young  Men's 
Guild,  with  a  bowling-alley  and  a  swimming- 
bath  deep  enough  to  drown  two  young  men  at 
a  time,  and  a  billiard-room  with  seven  tables. 
It  is  the  rector's  boast  that  with  a  Guild  House 
such  as  that  there  is  no  need  for  any  young 
man  of  the  congregation  to  frequent  a  saloon. 
Nor  is  there. 

And  on  Sunday  mornings,  when  the  great 
organ  plays,  and  the  mortgagees  and  the  bond- 
holders and  the  debenture-holders  and  the  Sun- 
day school  teachers  and  the  billiard-markers 
all  lift  up  their  voices  together,  there  is  emitted 
from  St.  Asaph's  a  volume  of  praise  that  is 
practically  as  fine  and  effective  as  paid  profes- 
sional work. 

St.  Asaph's  is  episcopal.  As  a  consequence 
it  has  in  it  and  about  it  all  those  things  which 
go  to  make  up  the  episcopal  church — ^brass  tab- 
lets let  into  its  walls,  blackbirds  singing  in  its 
elm  trees,  parishioners  who  dine  at  eight  o'clock, 
and  a  rector  who  wears  a  little  crucifix  and 
dances  the  tango. 

aoi 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

On  the  other  hand,  there  stands  upon  the 
same  street,  not  a  hundred  yards  away,  the  rival 
church  of  St.  Osoph — presbyterian  down  to  Its 
very  foundations  in  bed-rock,  thirty  feet  below 
the  level  of  the  avenue.  It  has  a  short,  squat 
tower — and  a  low  roof,  and  its  narrow  windows 
are  glazed  with  frosted  glass.  It  has  dark 
spruce  trees  instead  of  elms,  crows  instead  of 
blackbirds,  and  a  gloomy  minister  with  a  shovel 
hat  who  lectures  on  philosophy  on  week-days 
at  the  university.  He  loves  to  think  that  his 
congregation  are  made  of  the  lowly  and  the 
meek  in  spirit,  and  to  reflect  that,  lowly  and 
meek  as  they  are,  there  are  men  among  them 
that  could  buy  out  half  the  congregation  of 
St.  Asaph's. 

St.  Osoph's  is  only  presbyterian  in  a  special 
sense.  It  is,  in  fact,  too  presbyterian  to  be  any 
longer  connected  with  any  other  body  whatso- 
ever. It  seceded  some  forty  years  ago  from 
the  original  body  to  which  it  belonged,  and 
later  on,  with  three  other  churches,  it  seceded 
from  the  group  of  seceding  congregations.  Still 
later  it  fell  into  a  difference  with  the  three  other 
churches  on  the  question  of  eternal  punishment, 
the  word  "eternal"  not  appearing  to  the  elders 
of  St.  Osoph's  to  designate  a  sufficiently  long 
period.  The  dispute  ended  In  a  secession  which 
left  the  church  of  St.  Osoph  practically  isolated 

2Q2 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

in  a  world  of  sin  whose  approaching  fate  it 
neither  denied  nor  deplored. 

In  one  respect  the  rival  churches  of  Plutoria 
Avenue  had  had  a  similar  history.  Each  of 
them  had  moved  up  by  successive  stages  from 
the  lower  and  poorer  parts  of  the  city.  Forty 
years  ago  St.  Asaph's  had  been  nothing  more 
than  a  little  frame  church  with  a  tin  spire,  away 
in  the  west  of  the  slums,  and  St.  Osoph's  a 
square,  diminutive  building  away  in  the  east. 
But  the  site  of  St.  Asaph's  had  been  bought 
by  a  brewing  company,  and  the  trustees,  shrewd 
men  of  business,  themselves  rising  into  wealth, 
had  rebuilt  it  right  in  the  track  of  the  advanc- 
ing tide  of  a  real  estate  boom.  The  elders  of 
St.  Osoph,  quiet  men,  but  illumined  by  an  inner 
light,  had  followed  suit  and  moved  their  church 
right  against  the  side  of  an  expanding  dis- 
tillery. Thus  both  the  churches,  as  decade  fol- 
lowed decade,  made  their  way  up  the  slope  of 
the  City  till  St.  Asaph's  was  presently  glori- 
ously expropriated  by  the  street  railway  com- 
pany, and  planted  its  spire  in  triumph  on  Plu- 
toria Avenue  itself.  But  St.  Osoph's  followed. 
With  each  change  of  site  it  moved  nearer  and 
nearer  to  St.  Asaph's.  Its  elders  were  shrewd 
men.  With  each  move  of  their  church  they 
took  careful  thought  in  the  rebuilding.  In  the 
manufacturing  district  it  was  built  with  sixteen 
windows  on  each  side  and  was  converted  at  a 
203 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

huge  profit  into  a  bicycle  factory.  On  the  resi- 
dential street  it  was  made  long  and  deep  and 
was  sold  to  a  moving  picture  company  without 
the  alteration  of  so  much  as  a  pew.  As  a  last 
step  a  syndicate,  formed  among  the  members 
of  the  congregation  themselves,  bought  ground 
on  Plutoria  Avenue,  and  sublet  it  to  themselves 
as  a  site  for  the  church,  at  a  nominal  interest 
of  five  per  cent,  per  annum,  payable  nominally 
every  three  months  and  secured  by  a  nominal 
mortgage. 

As  the  two  churches  moved,  their  congrega- 
tions, or  at  least  all  that  was  best, of  them — 
such  members  as  were  sharing  in  the  rising 
fortunes  of  the  City — moved  also,  and  now  for 
some  six  or  seven  years  the  two  churches  and 
the  two  congregations  had  confronted  one  an- 
other among  the  elm  trees  of  the  Avenue  oppo- 
site to  the  university. 

But  at  this  point  the  fortunes  of  the  churches 
had  diverged.  St.  Asaph's  was  a  brilliant  suc- 
cess; St.  Osoph's  was  a  failure.  Even  its  own 
trustees  couldn't  deny  it.  At  a  time  when  St. 
Asaph's  was  not  only  paying  its  interest  but 
showing  a  handsome  surplus  on  everything  it 
undertook,  the  church  of  St.  Osoph  was  moving 
steadily  backwards. 

There  was  no  doubt,  of  course,  as  to  the 
cause.  Everybody  knew  it.  It  was  simply  a 
question  of  men,  and,  as  everybody  said,  one 

204 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

had  only  to  compare  the  two  men  conducting 
the  churches  to  see  why  one  succeeded  and  the 
other  failed. 

The  Reverend  Edward  Farefofth  Furlong  of 
St.  Asaph's  was  a  man  who  threw  his  whole 
energy  into  his  parish  work.  The  subtleties  of 
theological  controversy  he  left  to  minds  less 
active  than  his  own.  His  creed  was  one  of 
works  rather  than  of  words,  and  whatever  he 
was  doing  he  did  it  with  his  whole  heart. 
Whether  he  was  lunching  at  the  Mausoleum 
Club  with  one  of  his  churchwardens,  or  play- 
ing the  flute, — ^which  he  played  as  only  the  epis- 
copal clergy  can  play  it — accompanied  on  the 
harp  by  one  of  the  fairest  of  the  ladies  of  his 
choir,  or  whether  he  was  dancing  the  new  epis- 
copal tango  with  the  younger  daughters  of  the 
elder  parishioners,  he  threw  himself  into  it  with 
all  his  might.  He  could  drink  tea  more  grace- 
fully and  play  tennis  better  than  any  clergy- 
man on  this  side  of  the  Atlantic.  He  could 
stand  beside  the  white  stone  font  of  St.  Asaph's 
in  his  long  white  surplice  holding  a  white-robed 
infant,  worth  half  a  million  dollars,  looking  as 
beautifully  innocent  as  the  child  itself,  and 
drawing  from  every  matron  of  the  congrega- 
tion with  unmarried  daughters  the  despairing 
cry,  "  What  a  pity  that  he  has  no  children  of 
his  own  1  " 

Equally  sound  was  his  theology.  No  man 
205 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

was  known  to  preach  shorter  sermons  or  to 
explain  away  the  book  of  Genesis  more  agree- 
ably than  the  rector  of  St.  Asaph's;  and  if  he 
found  it  necessary  to  refer  to  the  Deity  he  did 
so  under  the  name  of  Jehovah  or  Jah,  or  even 
Yaweh,  in  a  manner  calculated  not  to  hurt  the 
sensitiveness  of  any  of  the  parishioners.  Peo- 
ple who  would  shudder  at  brutal  talk  of  the 
older  fashion  about  the  wrath  of  God  listened 
with  well-bred  interest  to  a  sermon  on  the  per- 
sonal characteristics  of  Jah.  In  the  same  way 
Mr.  Furlong  always  referred  to  the  devil,  not 
as  Satan  but  as  Su  or  Swa,  which  took  all  the 
sting  out  of  him.  Beelzebub  he  spoke  of  as 
Behel-Zawbab,  which  rendered  him  perfectly 
harmless.  The  Garden  of  Eden  he  spoke  of 
as  the  Paradeisos,  which  explained  it  entirely; 
the  flood  as  the  Diluvium,  which  cleared  it  up 
completely;  and  Jonah  he  named,  after  the  cor- 
rect fashion,  Joh  Nah,  which  put  the  whole 
situation  (his  being  swallowed  by  Baloo,  or  the 
Great  Lizard)  on  a  perfectly  satisfactory  foot- 
ing. Hell  itself  was  spoken  of  as  She-ol,  and 
it  appeared  that  it  was  not  a  place  of  burning, 
but  rather  of  what  one  might  describe  as  moral 
torment.  This  settled  She-ol  once  and  for  all: 
nobody  minds  moral  torment.  In  short,  there 
was  nothing  in  the  theological  system  of  Mr. 
Furlong  that  need  have  occasioned  in  any  of 
his  congregation  a  moment's  discomfort. 

206 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

There  could  be  no  greater  contrast  with  Mr. 
Fareforth  Furlong  than  the  minister  of  St. 
Osoph's,  the  Rev.  Dr.  McTeague,  who  was  also 
honorary  professor  of  philosophy  at  the  uni- 
versity. The  one  was  young,  the  other  was  old; 
the  one  could  dance,  the  other  could  not;  the 
one  moved  about  at  church  picnics  and  lawn 
teas  among  a  bevy  of  disciples  in  pink  and 
blue  sashes;  the  other  moped  around  under  the 
trees  of  the  university  campus,  with  blinking 
eyes  that  saw  nothing  and  an  abstracted  mind 
that  had  spent  fifty  years  in  trying  to  reconcile 
Hegel  with  St.  Paul,  and  was  still  busy  with  it. 
Mr.  Furlong  went  forward  with  the  times; 
Dr.  McTeague  slid  quietly  backwards  with  the 
centuries. 

Dr.  McTeague  was  a  failure,  and  all  his  con- 
gregation knew  it.  "He  is  not  up  to  date," 
they  said.  That  was  his  crowning  sin.  "He 
don't  go  forward  any,"  said  the  business  mem- 
bers of  the  congregation.  "That  old  man  be- 
lieves just  exactly  the  same  sort  of  stuff  now 
that  he  did  forty  years  ago.  What's  more,  he 
preaches  it.  You  can't  run  a  church  that  way, 
can  you?  " 

His  trustees  had  done  their  best  to  meet  the 
difficulty.  They  had  offered  Dr.  McTeague  a 
two-years'  vacation  to  go  and  see  the  Holy 
Land.  He  refused;  he  said  he  could  picture 
it.  They  reduced  his  salary  by  fifty  per  cent. ; 
207 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

he  never  noticed  it.  They  offered  him  an  as- 
sistant; but  he  shook  his  head,  saying  that  he 
didn't  know  where  he  could  find  a  man  to  do 
just  the  work  that  he  was  doing.  Meantime  he 
mooned  about  among  the  trees  concocting  a 
mixture  of  St.  Paul  with  Hegel,  three  parts 
to  one,  for  his  Sunday  sermon,  and  one  part 
to  three  for  his  Monday  lecture. 

No  doubt  it  was  his  dual  function  that  was 
to  blame  for  his  failure.  And  this,  perhaps, 
was  the  fault  of  Dr.  Boomer,  the  president  of 
the  university.  Dr.  Boomer,  like  all  university 
presidents  of  to-day,  belonged  to  the  presby- 
terian  church;  or  rather,  to  state  it  more  cor- 
rectly, he  included  presbyterianism  within  him- 
self. He  was,  of  course,  a  member  of  the  board 
of  management  of  St.  Osoph's,  and  it  was  he 
who  had  urged,  very  strongly,  the  appoint- 
ment of  Dr.  McTeague,  then  senior  professor 
of  philosophy,  as  minister. 

"A  saintly  man,"  he  said,  "the  very  man 
for  the  post.  If  you  should  ask  me  whether 
he  is  entirely  at  home  as  a  professor  of  philoso- 
phy on  our  staff  at  the  university,  I  should  be 
compelled  to  say  no.  We  are  forced  to  admit 
that  as  a  lecturer  he  does  not  meet  our  views. 
He  appears  to  find  it  difficult  to  keep  religion 
out  of  his  teaching.  In  fact,  his  lectures  are 
suffused  with  a  rather  dangerous  attempt  at 
moral  teaching  which  is  apt  to  contaminate  our 

flo8 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

students.  But  in  the  Church  I  should  imagine 
that  would  be,  if  anything,  an  advantage.  In- 
deed, if  you  were  to  come  to  me  and  say, 
'Boomer,  we  wish  to  appoint  Dr.  McTeague 
as  our  minister,'  I  should  say,  quite  frankly, 
Take  him.'  " 

So  Dr.  McTeague  had  been  appointed. 
Then,  to  the  surprise  of  everybody,  he  refused 
to  give  up  his  lectures  in  philosophy.  He  said 
he  felt  a  call  to  ^ve  them.  The  salary,  he  said, 
was  of  no  consequence.  He  wrote  to  Mr.  Fur- 
long senior  (the  father  of  the  episcopal  rector, 
and  honorary  treasurer  of  the  Plutoria  Uni- 
versity), and  stated  that  he  proposed  to  give 
his  lectures  for  nothing.  The  trustees  of  the 
college  protested;  they  urged  that  the  case 
might  set  a  dangerous  precedent  which  other 
professors  might  follow.  While  fully  admit- 
ting that  Dr.  McTeague's  lectures  were  well 
worth  giving  for  nothing,  they  begged  him  to 
reconsider  his  offer.  But  he  refused ;  and  from 
that  day  on,  in  spite  of  all  offers  that  he  should 
retire  on  double  his  salary,  that  he  should  visit 
the  Holy  Land,  or  Syria,  or  Armenia,  where 
the  dreadful  massacres  of  Christians  were  tak- 
ing place,  Dr.  McTeague  clung  to  his  post  with 
a  tenacity  worthy  of  the  best  traditions  of  Scot- 
land. His  only  internal  perplexity  was  that 
he  didn't  see  how,  when  the  time  came  for  him 
209 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

to  die,  twenty  or  thirty  years  hence,  they  would 
ever  be  able  to  replace  him. 

Such  was  the  situation  of  the  two  churches 
on  a  certain  beautiful  morning  In  June,  when  an 
unforeseen  event  altered  entirely  the  current  of 
their  fortunes. 

•  •  •  •  • 

"No,  thank  you,  Juliana,"  said  the  young 
rector  to  his  sister  across  the  breakfast  table, — 
and  there  was  something  as  near  to  bitterness 
in  his  look  as  his  saintly,  smooth-shaven  face 
was  capable  of  reflecting, — "no,  thank  you, 
no  more  porridge.  Prunes?  no,  no,  thank  you; 
I  don't  think  I  care  for  any.  And,  by  the 
way,"  he  added,  "don't  bother  to  keep  any 
lunch  for  me.  I  have  a  great  deal  of  busi- 
ness— that  is,  of  work  in  the  parish, — to  see 
to,  and  I  must  just  find  time  to  get  a  bite  of 
something  to  eat  when  and  where  I  can." 

In  his  own  mind  he  was  resolving  that  the 
place  should  be  the  Mausoleum  Club  and  the 
time  just  as  soon  as  the  head  waiter  would 
serve  him. 

After  which  the  Reverend  Edward  Fareforth 
Furlong  bowed  his  head  for  a  moment  in  a 
short,  silent  blessing, — the  one  prescribed  by 
the  episcopal  church  in  America  for  a  break- 
fast of  porridge  and  prunes. 

It  was  their  first  breakfast  together,  and  it 
spoke  volumes  to  the  rector.     He  knew  what 

210 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

it  implied.  It  stood  for  his  elder  sister  Juli- 
ana's views  on  the  need  of  personal  sacrifice 
as  a  means  of  grace.  The  rector  sighed  as  he 
rose.  He  had  never  missed  his  younger  sister 
Philippa,  now  married  and  departed,  so  keenly. 
Philippa  Had  had  opinions  of  her  own  on  bacon 
and  eggs  and  on  lamb  chops  with  watercress  as 
a  means  of  stimulating  the  soul.  But  Juliana 
was  different.  The  rector  understood  now  ex- 
actly why  it  was  that  his  father  had  exclaimed, 
on  the  news  of  Philippa's  engagement,  with- 
out a  second's  hesitation,  "Then,  of  course, 
Juliana  must  live  with  you!  Nonsense,  my 
dear  boy,  nonsense!  It's  my  duty  to  spare 
her  to  you.  After  all,  I  can  always  eat  at  the 
club;  they  can  give  me  a  bite  of  something  or 
other,  surely.  To  a  man  of  my  age,  Edward, 
food  is  really  of  no  consequence.  No,  no; 
Juliana  must  move  into  the  rectory  at  once.'* 

The  rector's  elder  sister  rose.  She  looked 
tall  and  sallow  and  forbidding  in  the  plain  black 
dress  that  contrasted  sadly  with  the  charming 
clerical  costumes  of  white  and  pink  and  the 
broad  episcopal  hats  with  flowers  in  them  that 
Philippa  used  to  wear  for  morning  work  in 
the  parish. 

"For  what  time  shall  I  order  dinner?"  she 
asked.  "You  and  Philippa  used  to  have  it  at 
half-past  seven,  did  you  not?  Don't  you  think 
that  rather  too  late?" 

211 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

"A  trifle,  perhaps,"  said  the  rector  uneasily. 
He  didn't  care  to  explain  to  Juliana  that  it 
was  impossible  to  get  home  any  earlier  from 
the  kind  of  the  dansant  that  everybody  was 
giving  just  now.  "But  don't  trouble  about 
dinner.  I  may  be  working  very  late.  If  I 
need  anything  to  eat  I  shall  get  a  biscuit  and 
some  tea  at  the  Guild  Rooms,  or " 

He  didn't  finish  the  sentence,  but  in  his  mind 
he  added,  "  or  else  a  really  first-class  dinner  at 
the  Mausoleum  Club,  or  at  the  Newberrys'  or 
the  Rasselyer-Browns' — anywhere  except  here." 

"If  you  are  going,  then,"  said  Juliana,  "may 
I  have  the  key  of  the  church." 

A  look  of  pain  passed  over  the  rector's  face. 
He  knew  perfectly  well  what  Juliana  wanted 
the  key  for.  She  meant  to  go  into  his  church 
and  pray  in  it. 

The  rector  of  St.  Asaph's  was,  he  trusted, 
as  broad-minded  a  man  as  an  Anglican  clergy- 
man ought  to  be.  He  had  no  objection  to  any 
reasonable  use  of  his  church — for  a  thanksgiv- 
ing festival  or  for  musical  recitals,  for  example 
— but  when  it  came  to  opening  up  the  church 
and  using  it  to  pray  in,  the  thing  was  going 
a  little  too  far.  What  was  more,  he  had  an 
idea  from  the  look  on  Juliana's  face  that  she 
meant  to  pray  for  him.  This,  for  a  clergy- 
man, was  hard  to  bear.  Philippa,  like  the  good 
girl  that  she  was,  had  prayed  only  for  herself, 

212 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

and  then  only  at  the  proper  times  and  places, 
and  in  a  proper  praying  costume.  The  rector 
began  to  realise  what  difficulties  it  might  make 
for  a  clergyman  to  have  a  religious  sister  as 
his  house-mate. 

But  he  was  never  a  man  for  unseemly  argu- 
ment.    *'It  is  hanging  in  my  study,"  he  said. 

And  with  that  the  Rev.  Fareforth  Furlong 
passed  into  the  hall,  took  up  the  simple  silk  hat, 
the  stick  and  gloves  of  the  working  clergyman, 
and  walked  out  on  to  the  avenue  to  begin  his 
day's  work  in  the  parish. 

The  rector's  parish,  viewed  in  its  earthly 
aspect,  was  a  singularly  beautiful  place.  For 
it  extended  all  along  Plutoria  Avenue,  where 
the  street  is  widest  and  the  elm  trees  are  at 
'their  leafiest  and  the  motors  at  their  very 
drowsiest.  It  lay  up  and  down  the  shaded  side 
streets  of  the  residential  district,  darkened  with 
great  chestnuts  and  hushed  in  a  stillness  that 
was  almost  religion  itself.  There  was  not  a 
house  in  the  parish  assessed  at  less  than  twenty- 
five  thousand,  and  in  the  very  heart  of  it  the 
Mausoleum  Club,  with  its  smooth  white  stone 
and  its  Grecian  architecture,  carried  one  back 
to  the  ancient  world  and  made  one  think  of 
Athens  and  of  Paul  preaching  on  Mars  Hill. 
It  was,  all  considered,  a  splendid  thing  to  fight 
sin  in  such  a  parish  and  to  keep  it  out  of  it. 
For  kept  out  it  was.  One  might  look  the  length 
213 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

and  breadth  of  the  broad  avenue  and  see  no 
sign  of  sin  all  along  it.  There  was  certainly 
none  in  the  smooth  faces  of  the  chauffeurs 
trundling  their  drowsy  motors ;  no  sign  of  it  in 
the  expensive  children  paraded  by  imported 
nursemaids  in  the  chequered  light  of  the  shaded 
street;  least  of  all  was  there  any  sign  of  it  in 
the  Stock  Exchange  members  of  the  congrega- 
tion as  they  walked  along  side  by  side  to  their 
lunch  at  the  Mausoleum  Club,  their  silk  hats 
nodding  together  in  earnest  colloquy  on  Shares 
Preferred,  and  Profits  Undivided.  So  might 
have  walked,  so  must  have  walked,  the  very 
Fathers  of  the  Church  themselves. 

Whatever  sin  there  was  in  the  City  was 
shoved  sideways  into  the  roaring  streets  of  com- 
merce where  the  elevated  railway  ran,  and  be- 
low that  again  into  the  slums.  Here  there 
must  have  been  any  quantity  of  sin.  The  rector 
of  St.  Asaph's  was  certain  of  it.  Many  of  the 
richer  of  his  parishioners  had  been  down  in 
parties  late  at  night  to  look  at  it,  and  the  ladies 
of  his  congregation  were  joined  together  into 
all  sorts  of  guilds  and  societies  and  bands  of 
endeavour  for  stamping  it  out  and  driving  it 
under  or  putting  it  into  jail  till  it  surrendered. 

But  the  slums  lay  outside  the  rector's  parish. 
He  had  no  right  to  interfere.  They  were  under 
the  charge  of  a  special  mission  or  auxiliary, 
a  remnant  of  the  St.  Asaph's  of  the  past,  placed 

214 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

under  the  care  of  a  divinity  student,  at  four 
hundred  dollars  per  annum.  His  charge  in- 
cluded all  the  slums  and  three  police-courts  and 
two  music-halls  and  the  City  jail.  One  Sun- 
day afternoon  in  every  three  months  the  rector 
and  several  ladies  went  down  and  sang  hymns 
for  him  in  his  mission-house.  But  his  work 
was  really  very  easy.  A  funeral,  for  example, 
at  the  mission,  was  a  simple  affair,  meaning 
nothing  more  than  the  preparation  of  a  plain 
coffin  and  a  glassless  hearse  and  the  distribu- 
tion of  a  few  artificial  everlasting  flowers  to 
women  crying  in  their  aprons;  a  thing  easily 
done:  whereas  in  St.  Asaph's  parish,  where 
all  the  really  important  souls  were,  a  funeral 
was  a  large  event,  requiring  taste  and  tact, 
and  a  nice  shading  of  delicacy  in  distinguishing 
mourners  from  beneficiaries,  and  private  grief 
from  business  representation  at  the  ceremony. 
A  funeral  with  a  plain  coffin  and  a  hearse  was 
as  nothing  beside  an  interment,  with  a  casket 
smothered  in  hot-house  syringas,  borne  in  a 
coach  and  followed  by  special  reporters  from 
the  financial  papers. 

•  •  •  •     *  • 

It  appeared  to  the  rector  afterwards  as 
almost  a  shocking  coincidence  that  the  first  per- 
son whom  he  met  upon  the  avenue  should  have 
been  the  Rev.  Dr.  McTeague  himself.  Mr. 
Furlong  gave  him  the  form  of  amiable  "good 
215 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

morning  "  that  the  episcopal  church  always  ex- 
tends to  those  in  error.  But  he  did  not  hear 
It.  The  minister's  head  was  bent  low,  his  eyes 
gazed  into  vacancy,  and  from  the  movements 
of  his  lips  and  from  the  fact  that  he  carried  a 
leather  case  of  notes,  he  was  plainly  on  his  way 
to  his  philosophical  lecture.  But  the  rector  had 
no  time  to  muse  upon  the  abstracted  appear- 
ance of  his  rival.  For,  as  always  happened  to 
him,  he  was  no  sooner  upon  the  street  than  his 
parish  work  of  the  day  began.  In  fact,  he  had 
hardly  taken  a  dozen  steps  after  passing  Dr. 
McTeague  when  he  was  brought  up  standing 
by  two  beautiful  parishioners  with  pink  para- 
sols. 

"Oh,  Mr.  Furlong,"  exclaimed  one  of  them, 
"so  fortunate  to  happen  to  catch  you ;  we  were 
just  going  into  the  rectory  to  consult  you. 
Should  the  girls — for  the  lawn  tea  for  the  Guild 
on  Friday,  you  know — wear  white  dresses  with 
light  blue  sashes  all  the  same,  or  do  you  think 
we  might  allow  them  to  wear  any  coloured 
sashes  that  they  like?     What  do  you  think?" 

This  was  an  important  problem.  In  fact, 
there  was  a  piece  of  parish  work  here  that  It 
took  the  Reverend  Fareforth  half  an  hour  to 
attend  to,  standing  the  while  in  earnest  collo- 
quy with  the  two  ladies  under  the  shadow  of 
the  elm  trees.  But  a  clergyman  must  never  be 
grudging  of  his  time. 

216 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

"Good-bye,  then,"  they  said  at  last.  "Arc 
you  coming  to  the  Browning  Club  this  morn- 
ing? Oh,  so  sorry  I  but  we  shall  see  you  at 
the  muslcale  this  afternoon,  shall  we  not?" 

"Oh,  I  trust  so,"  said  the  rector. 

"How  dreadfully  hard  he  works,"  said  the 
ladies  to  one  another  as  they  moved  away. 

Thus  slowly  and  with  many  Interruptions 
the  rector  made  his  progress  along  the  avenue. 
At  times  he  stopped  to  permit  a  pink-cheeked 
infant  in  a  perambulator  to  beat  him  with  a 
rattle  while  he  inquired  its  age  of  an  episcopal 
nurse,  gay  with  flowing  ribbons.  He  lifted  his 
hat  to  the  bright  parasols  of  his  parishioners 
passing  In  glistening  motors,  bowed  to  episcopa- 
lians, nodded  amiably  to  presbyterians,  and  even 
acknowledged  with  his  lifted  hat  the  passing  of 
persons  of  graver  forms  of  error. 

Thus  he  took  his  way  along  the  avenue  and 
down  a  side  street  towards  the  business  dis- 
trict of  the  City,  until  just  at  the  edge  of  It, 
where  the  trees  were  about  to  stop  and  the 
shops  were  about  to  begin,  he  found  himself  at 
the  door  of  the  Hymnal  Supply  Corporation, 
Limited.  The  premises  as  seen  from  the  out- 
side combined  the  Idea  of  an  office  with  an 
ecclesiastical  appearance.  The  door  was  as 
that  of  a  chancel  or  vestry;  there  was  a  large 
plate-glass  window  filled  with  Bibles  and  Testa- 
ments, all  spread  open  and  shewing  every  va- 
217 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

riety  of  language  in  their  pages.  These 
were  marked,  "Arabic,"  "Syriac,"  "Coptic," 
"Ojibway,"  "Irish"  and  so  forth.  On  the 
window  in  small  white  lettering  were  the  words, 
"Hymnal  Supply  Corporation,"  and  below 
that  "Hosanna  Pipe  and  Steam  Organ  In- 
corporated," and  still  lower  the  legend,  "Bible 
Society  of  the  Good  Shepherd  Limited." 

There  was  no  doubt  of  the  sacred  character 
of  the  place. 

Here  laboured  Mr.  Furlong  senior,  the 
father  of  the  Rev.  Edward  Fareforth.  He  was 
a  man  of  many  activities,  president  and  man- 
aging director  of  the  companies  just  mentioned, 
trustee  and  secretary  of  St.  Asaph's,  honorary 
treasurer  of  the  university,  etc.;  and  each  of 
his  occupations  and  offices  was  marked  by  some- 
thing of  a  supramundane  character,  something 
higher  than  ordinary  business.  His  different 
official  positions  naturally  overlapped  and 
brought  him  into  contact  with  himself  from 
a  variety  of  angles.  Thus  he  sold  himself 
hymn-books  at  a  price  per  thousand,  made  as 
a  business  favour  to  himself,  negotiated  with 
himself  the  purchase  of  the  ten  thousand  dollar 
organ  (making  a  price  on  it  to  himself  that 
he  begged  himself  to  regard  as  confidential), 
and  as  treasurer  of  the  college  he  sent  himself 
an  informal  note  of  enquiry  asking  if  he  knew 
of  any  sound  investment  for  the  annual  deficit 

218 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

of  the  college  funds,  a  matter  of  some  sixty 
thousand  dollars  a  year,  which  needed  very 
careful  handling.  Any  man — and  there  are 
many  such — who  has  been  concerned  with  busi- 
ness dealings  of  this  sort  with  himself  realises 
that  they  are  more  satisfactory  than  any  other 
kind. 

To  what  better  person  then  could  the  rector 
of  St.  Asaph's  bring  the  quarterly  accounts  and 
statements  of  his  church  than  to  Mr.  Furlong 
senior. 

The  outer  door  was  opened  to  the  rector  by 
a  sanctified  boy  with  such  a  face  as  is  only 
found  in  the  choirs  of  the  episcopal  church. 
In  an  outer  office  through  which  the  rector 
passed  were  two  sacred  stenographers  with 
hair  as  golden  as  the  daffodils  of  Sheba,  copy- 
ing confidential  letters  on  absolutely  noiseless 
typewriters.  They  were  making  offers  of  Bibles 
in  half-car-load  lots  at  two  and  a  half  per  cent, 
reduction,  offering  to  reduce  St.  Mark  by  two 
cents  on  condition  of  immediate  export,  and 
to  lay  down  St.  John  F.O.B.  San  Francisco  for 
seven  cents,  while  regretting  that  they  could 
deliver  fifteen  thousand  Rock  of  Ages  in  Mis- 
souri on  no  other  terms  than  cash. 

The  sacred  character  of  their  work  lent  them 
a  preoccupation  beautiful  to  behold. 

In  the  room  beyond  them  was  a  white-haired 
confidential  clerk,   venerable   as  the  Song   of 
219 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

Solomon,  and  by  him  Mr.  Fareforth  Furlong 
was  duly  shown  into  the  office  of  his  father. 

"Good-morning,  Edward,"  said  Mr.  Furlong 
senior,  as  he  shook  hands.  "I  was  expecting 
you.  And  while  I  think  of  it,  I  have  just  had 
a  letter  from  Philippa.  She  and  Tom  will 
be  home  in  two  or  three  weeks.  She  writes 
from  Egypt.  She  wishes  me  to  tell  you,  as  no 
doubt  you  have  already  anticipated,  that  she 
thinks  she  can  hardly  continue  to  be  a  member 
of  the  congregation  when  they  come  back.  No 
doubt  you  felt  this  yourself?" 

"Oh,  entirely,"  said  the  rector.  "Surely 
in  matters  of  belief  a  wife  must  follow  her  hus- 
band." 

"Exactly;  especially  as  Tom's  uncles  occupy 

the  position  they  do  with  regard  to "   Mr. 

Furlong  jerked  his  head  backwards  and  pointed 
with  his  thumb  over  his  shoulder  in  a  way  that 
his  son  knew  was  meant  to  indicate  St.  Osoph's 
Church. 

The  Overend  brothers,  who  were  Tom's 
uncles  (his  name  being  Tom  Overend)  were,  as 
everybody  knew,  among  the  principal  support- 
ers of  St.  Osoph's.  Not  that  they  were,  by 
origin,  presbyterians.  But  they  were  self-made 
men,  which  put  them  once  and  for  all  out  of 
sympathy  with  such  a  place  as  St.  Asaph's. 
"We  made  ourselves,"  the  two  brothers  used 
to  repeat,  in  defiance  of  the  catechism  of  the 

220 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

Anglican  Church.  They  never  wearied  of  ex- 
plaining how  Mr.  Dick,  the  senior  brother, 
had  worked  overtime  by  day  to  send  Mr. 
George,  the  junior  brother,  to  school  by  night, 
and  how  Mr.  George  had  then  worked  over- 
time by  night  to  send  Mr.  Dick  to  school  by 
day.  Thus  they  had  come  up  the  business 
ladder  hand  over  hand,  landing  later  on  in  life 
on  the  platform  of  success  like  two  corpulent 
acrobats,  panting  with  the  strain  of  it.  "For 
years,"  Mr.  George  would  explain,  "we  had 
father  and  mother  to  keep  as  well;  then  they 
died,  and  Dick  and  me  saw  daylight."  By 
which  he  meant  no  harm  at  all,  but  only  stated 
a  fact,  and  concealed  the  virtue  of  it. 

And  being  self-made  men  they  made  it  a 
point  to  do  what  they  could  to  lessen  the  im- 
portance of  such  an  institution  as  St.  Asaph's 
Church.  By  the  same  contrariety  of  nature  the 
two  Overend  brothers  (their  business  name 
was  Overend  Brothers,  Limited)  were  support- 
ers of  the  dissentient  Young  Men's  Guild,  and 
the  second  or  rival  University  Settlement,  and 
of  anything  or  everything  that  showed  a  likeli- 
hood of  making  trouble.  On  this  principle  they 
were  warm  supporters  and  friends  of  the  Rev. 
Dr.  McTeague.  The  minister  had  even  gone 
so  far  as  to  present  to  the  brothers  a  copy 
of  his  philosophical  work,  "  McTeague's  Expo- 
sition of  the  Kantian  Hypothesis,"  and  the  two 

221 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

brothers  had  read  it  through  in  the  office,  de- 
voting each  of  them  a  whole  morning  to  it. 
Mr.  Dick,  the  senior  brother,  had  said  that  he 
had  never  seen  anything  like  it,  and  Mr. 
George,  the  junior,  had  declared  that  a  man 
who  could  write  that  was  capable  of  anything. 

On  the  whole  it  was  evident  that  the  rela- 
tions between  the  Overend  family  and  the  pres- 
byterian  religion  were  too  intimate  to  allow 
Mrs.  Tom  Overend,  formerly  Miss  Philippa 
Furlong,  to  sit  anywhere  else  of  a  Sunday  than 
under  Dr.  McTeague. 

"Philippa  writes,"  continued  Mr.  Furlong, 
"that  under  the  circumstances  she  and  Tom 
would  like  to  do  something  for  your  church. 
She  would  like — yes,  I  have  the  letter  here — to 
give  you,  as  a  surprise,  of  course,  either  a  new 
font  or  a  carved  pulpit;  or  perhaps  a  cheque; 
she  wishes  me  on  no  account  to  mention  it  to 
you  directly,  but  to  ascertain  indirectly  from 
you,  what  would  be  the  better  surprise." 

"Oh,  a  cheque,  I  think,"  said  the  rector; 
"one  can  do  so  much  more  with  it,  after  all." 

"Precisely,"  said  his  father;  he  was  well 
aware  of  many  things  that  can  be  done  with  a 
cheque  that  cannot  possibly  be  done  with  a 
font. 

"That's  settled  then,"  resumed  Mr.  Fur- 
long; "and  now  I  suppose  you  want  me  to  run 
my  eye  over  your  quarterly  statements,   do 

222 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

you  not,  before  we  send  them  in  to  the  trus- 
tees? That  is  what  youVe  come  for,  is  it 
not?" 

"Yes,"  said  the  rector,  drawing  a  bundle  of 
blue  and  white  papers  from  his  pocket.  "I 
have  everything  with  me.  Our  shewing  is,  I 
believe,  excellent,  though  I  fear  I  fail  to  present 
it  as  clearly  as  it  might  be  done." 

Mr.  Furlong  senior  spread  the  papers  on 
the  table  before  him  and  adjusted  his  spec- 
tacles to  a  more  convenient  angle.  He  smiled 
indulgently  as  he  looked  at  the  documents  be- 
fore him. 

"I  am  afraid  you  would  never  make  an  ac- 
countant, Edward,"  he  said. 

"I  fear  not,"  said  the  rector. 

"Your  items,"  said  his  father,  "are  entered 
wrongly.  Here,  for  example,  in  the  general 
statement,  you  put  down  Distribution  of  Coals 
to  the  Poor  to  your  credit.  In  the  same  way, 
Bibles  and  Prizes  to  the  Sunday  School  you 
again  mark  to  your  credit.  Why?  Don't  you 
see,  my  boy,  that  these  things  are  debits?  When 
you  give  out  Bibles  or  distribute  fuel  to  the 
poor  you  give  out  something  for  which  you  get 
no  return.  It  is  a  debit.  On  the  other  hand, 
such  items  as  Church  Offertory,  Scholars'  Pen- 
nies, etc.,  are*pure  profit.  Surely  the  principle 
is  clear." 

aas 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

*'I  think  I  see  it  better  now,"  said  the  Rev. 
Edward. 

"Perfectly  plain,  isn't  it?"  his  father  went 
on.  "And  here  again,  Paupers'  Burial  Fund, 
a  loss;  enter  it  as  such.  Christmas  Gift  to 
Verger  and  Sexton,  an  absolute  loss — you  get 
nothing  in  return.  Widow's  Mite,  Fines  in- 
flicted in  Sunday  School,  etc.,  these  are  profit; 
write  them  down  as  such.  By  this  method,  you 
see,  in  ordinary  business  we  can  tell  exactly 
where  we  stand:  anything  which  we  give  out 
without  return  or  reward  we  count  as  a  debit; 
all  that  we  take  from  others  without  giving  in 
return  we  count  as  so  much  to  our  credit." 

"Ah,  yes,"  murmured  the  rector.  "I  begin 
to  understand." 

"Very  good.  But  after  all,  Edward,  I 
mustn't  quarrel  with  the  mere  form  of  your 
accounts;  the  statement  is  really  a  splendid 
shewing.  I  see  that  not  only  is  our  mortgage 
and  debenture  interest  all  paid  to  date,  but  that 
a  number  of  our  enterprises  are  making  a  hand- 
some return.  I  notice,  for  example,  that  the 
Girls'  Friendly  Society  of  the  church  not  only 
pays  for  itself,  but  that  you  are  able  to  take 
something  out  of  its  funds  and  transfer  it  to 
the  Men's  Book  Club.  Excellent  1  And  I  ob- 
serve that  you  have  been  able  to  take  a  large 
portion  of  the  Soup  Kitchen  Fund  and  put  it 
into  the  Rector's  Picnic  Account.    Very  good 

224 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

indeed.  In  this  respect  your  figures  are  a  model 
for  church  accounts  anywhere." 

Mr.  Furlong  continued  his  scrutiny  of  the 
accounts.  "Excellent,"  he  murmured,  "and 
on  the  whole  an  annual  surplus,  I  see,  of  sev- 
eral thousands.  But  stop  a  bit,"  he  continued, 
checking  himself;  "what's  this?  Are  you 
aware,  Edward,  that  you  are  losing  money  on 
your  Foreign  Missions  Account?" 

"I  feared  as  much,"  said  Edward. 

"It's  incontestable.  Look  at  the  figures  for 
yourself:  missionary's  salary  so  much,  clothes 
and  books  to  converts  so  much,  voluntary  and 
other  offerings  of  converts  so  much — why, 
you're  losing  on  it,  Edward!"  exclaimed  Mr. 
Furlong,  and  he  shook  his  head  dubiously  at 
the  accounts  before  him. 

"I  thought,"  protested  his  son,  "that  in  view 
of  the  character  of  the  work  itself " 

"Quite  so,"  answered  his  father,  "quite  so. 
I  fully  admit  the  force  of  that.  I  am  only 
asking  you,  is  it  worth  it?  Mind  you,  I  am 
not  speaking  now  as  a  Christian,  but  as  a 
business  man.     Is  it  worth  it?" 

"I  thought  that  perhaps,  in  view  of  the  fact 
of  our  large  surplus  in  other  directions " 

"Exactly,"  said  his  father,  "a  heavy  sur- 
plus. It  is  precisely  on  that  point  that  I  wished 
to  speak  to  you  this  morning.  You  have  at 
present  a  large  annual  surplus,  and  there  is 
225 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

every  prospect  under  Providence — In  fact,  I 
think  In  any  case — of  It  continuing  for  years  to 
come.  If  I  may  speak  very  frankly  I  should 
say  that  as  long  as  our  reverend  friend  Dr. 
McTeague  continues  In  his  charge  of  St. 
Osoph's — and  I  trust  that  he  may  be  spared 
for  many  years  to  come — you  are  likely  to  en- 
joy the  present  prosperity  of  your  church.  Very 
good.  The  question  arises,  what  disposition 
are  we  to  make  of  our  accumulating  funds?" 

"Yes,"  said  the  rector,  hesitating. 

"I  am  speaking  to  you  now,"  said  his  father, 
"not  as  the  secretary  of  your  church,  but  as 
president  of  the  Hymnal  Supply  Company 
which  I  represent  here.  Now  please  under- 
stand, Edward,  I  don't  want  In  any  way  to 
force  or  control  your  judgment.  I  merely  wish 
to  shew  you  certain — shall  I  say  certain  oppor- 
tunities that  present  themselves  for  the  dis- 
posal of  our  funds?  The  matter  can  be  taken 
up  later,  formally,  by  yourself  and  the  trus- 
tees of  the  church.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  I  have 
already  written  to  myself  as  secretary  In  the 
matter,  and  I  have  received  what  I  consider  a 
quite  encouraging  answer.  Let  me  explain  what 
I  propose." 

Mr.  Furlong  senior  rose,  and  opening  the 
door  of  the  office, 

"Everett,"  he  said  to  the  ancient  clerk, 
"kindly  g^ve  me  a  Bible." 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

It  was  given  to  him. 

Mr.  Furlong  stood  with  the  Bible  poised  In 
his  hand. 

"Now  we,"  he  went  on,  "I  mean  the  Hym- 
nal Supply  Corporation,  have  an  idea  for  bring- 
ing out  an  entirely  new  Bible." 

A  look  of  dismay  appeared  on  the  saintly 
face  of  the  rector. 

"A  new  Bible!"  he  gasped. 

"Precisely!"  said  his  father,  "a  new  Bible  I 
This  one — and  we  find  it  every  day  in  our  busi- 
ness— is  all  wrong." 

"All  wrong!"  said  the  rector  with  horror 
in  his  face. 

"My  dear  boy,"  exclaimed  his  father,  "pray, 
pray,  do  not  misunderstand  me.  Don't 
imagine  for  a  moment  that  I  mean  wrong  in 
a  religious  sense.  Such  a  thought  could  never, 
I  hope,  enter  my  mind.  All  that  I  mean  is 
that  this  Bible  is  badly  made  up." 

"Badly  made  up!"  repeated  his  son,  as 
mystified  as  ever. 

"I  see  that  you  do  not  understand  me.  What 
I  mean  is  this.  Let  me  try  to  make  myself 
quite  clear.  For  the  market  of  to-day  this 
Bible" — and  he  poised  it  again  on  his  hand, 
as  if  to  test  its  weight,  "is  too  heavy.  The 
people  of  to-day  want  something  lighter,  some- 
thing easier  to  get  hold  of.    Now  if " 

227 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

But  what  Mr.  Furlong  was  about  to  say 
was  lost  forever  to  the  world. 

For  just  at  this  juncture  something  occurred 
calculated  to  divert  not  only  Mr.  Furlong's 
sentence,  but  the  fortunes  and  the  surplus  of 
St.  Asaph's  itself.  At  the  very  moment  when 
Mr.  Furlong  was  speaking  a  newspaper  de- 
livery man  in  the  street  outside  handed  to  the 
sanctified  boy  the  office  copy  of  the  noonday 
paper.  And  the  boy  had  no  sooner  looked  at 
its  headlines  than  he  said,  "How  dreadful  I" 
Being  sanctified,  he  had  no  stronger  form  of 
speech  than  that.  But  he  handed  the  paper 
forthwith  to  one  of  the  stenographers  with 
hair  like  the  daffodils  of  Sheba,  and  when  she 
looked  at  it  she  exclaimed,  "How  awful!" 
And  she  knocked  at  once  at  the  door  of  the 
ancient  clerk  and  gave  the  paper  to  him;  and 
when  he  looked  at  it  and  saw  the  headline  the 
ancient  clerk  murmured,  "Ah!"  in  the  gentle 
tone  in  which  very  old  people  greet  the  news 
of  catastrophe  or  sudden  death. 

But  in  his  turn  he  opened  Mr.  Furlong's  door 
and  put  down  the  paper,  laying  his  finger  on 
the  column  for  a  moment  without  a  word. 

Mr.  Furlong  stopped  short  in  his  sentence. 
"Dear  me!"  he  said  as  his  eyes  caught  the 
item  of  news.     "How  very  dreadful!" 

"What  is  it?"  said  the  rector. 
228 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

"Dr.  McTeague,"  answered  his  father.  "He 
has  been  stricken  with  paralysis  I" 

"How  shocking!"  said  the  rector,  aghast. 
"But  when?     I  saw  him  only  this  morning." 

"It  has  just  happened,"  said  his  father,  fol- 
lowing down  the  column  of  the  newspaper  as 
he  spoke,  "this  morning,  at  the  university,  in 
his  classroom,  at  a  lecture.  Dear  me,  how 
dreadful!  I  must  go  and  see  the  president  at 
once." 

Mr.  Furlong  was  about  to  reach  for  his  hat 
and  stick  when  at  that  moment  the  aged  clerk 
knocked  at  the  door. 

"Dr.  Boomer,"  he  announced  in  a  tone  of 
solemnity  suited  to  the  occasion. 

Dr.  Boomer  entered,  shook  hands  in  silence 
and  sat  down. 

"You  have  heard  our  sad  news,  I  suppose?" 
he  said.  He  used  the  word  "our"  as  between 
the  university  president  and  his  honorary 
treasurer. 

"How  did  it  happen?"  asked  Mr.  Furlong. 

"Most  distressing,  "said  the  president.  "Dr. 
McTeague,  It  seems,  had  just  entered  his 
ten  o'clock  class  (the  hour  was  about  ten- 
twenty)  and  was  about  to  open  his  lecture,  when 
one  of  his  students  rose  in  his  seat  and  asked 
a  question.  It  Is  a  practice,"  continued  Dr. 
Boomer,  "  which,  I  need  hardly  say,  we  do  not 
encourage;  the  young  man,  I  believe,  was  a 
229 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

new-comer  in  the  philosophy  class.  At  any 
rate,  he  asked  Dr.  McTeague,  quite  suddenly 
it  appears,  how  he  could  reconcile  his  theory 
of  transcendental  immaterialism  with  a  scheme 
of  rigid  moral  determinism.  Dr.  McTeague 
stared  for  a  moment,  his  mouth,  so  the  class 
assert,  painfully  open.  The  student  repeated 
the  question,  and  poor  McTeague  fell  forward 
over  his  desk,  paralysed." 

"Is  he  dead?"  gasped  Mr.  Furlong. 

"No,"  said  the  president.  "But  we  expect 
his  death  at  any  moment.  Dr.  Slyder,  I  may 
say,  is  with  him  now  and  is  doing  all  he  can." 

"In  any  case,  I  suppose,  he  could  hardly 
recover  enough  to  continue  his  college  duties," 
said  the  young  rector. 

"Out  of  the  question,"  said  the  president. 
"I  should  not  like  to  state  that  of  itself  mere 
paralysis  need  incapacitate  a  professor.  Dr. 
Thrum,  our  professor  of  the  theory  of  music, 
is,  as  you  know,  paralysed  in  his  ears,  and  Mr. 
Slant,  our  professor  of  optics,  is  paralysed  in 
his  right  eye.  But  this  is  a  case  of  paralysis  of 
the  brain.  I  fear  it  is  incompatible  with  pro- 
fessorial work." 

"Then,  I  suppose,"  said  Mr.  Furlong  senior, 
"we  shall  have  to  think  of  the  question  of  a 
successor." 

They  had  both  been  thinking  of  it  for  at 
least  three  minutes. 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

"We  must,"  said  the  president.  "For  the 
moment  I  feel  too  stunned  by  the  sad  news  to 
act.  I  have  merely  telegraphed  to  two  or  three 
leading  colleges  for  a  locum  tenens  and  sent  out 
a  few  advertisements  announcing  the  chair  as 
vacant.  But  it  will  be  difficult  to  replace  Mc- 
Teague.  He  was  a  man,"  added  Dr.  Boomer, 
rehearsing  In  advance,  unconsciously,  no  doubt, 
his  forthcoming  oration  over  Dr.  McTeague's 
death,  "of  a  singular  grasp,  a  breadth  of  cul- 
ture, and  he  was  able,  as  few  men  are,  to  instil 
what  I  might  call  a  spirit  of  religion  into  his 
teaching.  His  lectures,  indeed,  were  suffused 
with  moral  Instruction,  and  exercised  over  his 
students  an  Influence  second  only  to  that  of  the 
pulpit  itself." 

He  paused. 

"Ah  yes,  the  pulpit,"  said  Mr.  Furlong, 
"there  indeed  you  will  miss  him." 

"That,"  said  Dr.  Boomer  very  reverently, 
"is  our  real  loss,  deep,  Irreparable.  I  sup- 
pose, indeed  I  am  certain,  we  shall  never  again 
see  such  a  man  in  the  pulpit  of  St.  Osoph's. 
Which  reminds  me,"  he  added  more  briskly, 
"I  must  ask  the  newspaper  people  to  let  it  be 
known  that  there  will  be  service  as  usual  the 
day  after  to-morrow,  and  that  Dr.  McTeague's 
death  will,  of  course,  make  no  difference — that 
is  to  say — I  must  see  the  newspaper  people  at 
once." 


2Sl 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

That  afternoon  all  the  newspaper  editors  in 
the  City  were  busy  getting  their  obituary  notices 
ready  for  the  demise  of  Dr.  McTeague. 

"The  death  of  Dr.  McTeague,"  wrote  the 
editor  of  the  Commercial  and  Financial  Under- 
tone, a  paper  which  had  almost  openly  advo- 
cated the  minister's  dismissal  for  five  years 
back,  "comes  upon  us  as  an  irreparable  loss. 
His  place  will  be  difficult,  nay,  impossible,  to 
fill.  Whether  as  a  philosopher  or  a  divine  he 
cannot  be  replaced." 

"We  have  no  hesitation  in  saying,"  so  wrote 
the  editor  of  the  Plutorian  Times,  a  three-cent 
morning  paper,  which  was  able  to  take  a  broad 
or  three-cent  point  of  view  of  men  and  things, 
"that  the  loss  of  Dr.  McTeague  will  be  just  as 
much  felt  in  Europe  as  in  America.  To  Ger- 
many the  news  that  the  hand  that  penned  'Mc- 
Teague's  Shorter  Exposition  of  the  Kantian 
Hypothesis'  has  ceased  to  write  will  come  with 
the  shock  of  poignant  anguish;  while  to 
France " 

The  editor  left  the  article  unfinished  at  that 
point.  After  all,  he  was  a  ready  writer,  and 
he  reflected  that  there  would  be  time  enough 
before  actually  going  to  press  to  consider  from 
what  particular  angle  the  blow  of  McTeague's 
death  would  strike  down  the  people  of  France. 

So  ran  in  speech  and  in  writing,  during  two 
or  three  days,  the  requiem  of  Dr.  McTeague. 

232 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

Altogether  there  were  more  kind  things  said 
of  him  in  the  three  days  during  which  he  was 
taken  for  dead,  than  in  thirty  years  of  his  life 
— which  seemed  a  pity. 

And  after  it  all,  at  the  close  of  the  third  day, 
Dr.  McTeague  feebly  opened  his  eyes. 

But  when  he  opened  them  the  world  had 
already  passed  on,  and  left  him  behind. 


333 


Chapter  VII, — The   Ministrations   of   the 
Rev,  Uttermust  Dumfarthin^ 

WELL  then,  gentlemen,  I  think  we 
have  all  agreed  upon  our  man?" 
Mr.  Dick  Overend  looked 
around  the  table  as  he  spoke  at 
the  managing  trustees  of  St.  Osoph's  church. 
They  were  assembled  in  an  upper  committee 
room  of  the  Mausoleum  Club.  Their  official 
place  of  meeting  was  in  a  board  room  off  the 
vestry  of  the  church.  But  they  had  felt  a 
draught  in  it,  some  four  years  ago,  which  had 
wafted  them  over  to  the  club  as  their  place  of 
assembly.    In  the  club  there  were  no  draughts. 

Mr.  Dick  Overend  sat  at  the  head  of  the 
table,  his  brother  George  beside  him,  and  Dr. 
Boomer  at  the  foot.  Beside  them  were  Mr. 
Boulder,  Mr.  Skinyer  (of  Skinyer  and  Beatem) 
and  the  rest  of  the  trustees. 

"You  are  agreed,  then,  on  the  Reverend 
Uttermust  Dumfarthing?" 

"Quite  agreed,"  murmured  several  trustees 
together. 

"A  most  remarkable  man,"  said  Dr.  Boomer. 
"I  heard  him  preach  in  his  present  church.  He 
gave  utterance  to  thoughts  that  I  have  myself 

234 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

been  thinking  for  years.  I  never  listened  to  any- 
thing so  sound  or  so  scholarly." 

"I  heard  him  the  night  he  preached  in  New 
York,"  said  Mr.  Boulder.  "He  preached  a 
sermon  to  the  poor.  He  told  them  they  were 
no  good.  I  never  heard,  outside  of  a  Scotch 
pulpit,  such  splendid  invective." 

"Is  he  Scotch?"  said  one  of  the  trustees. 

"Of  Scotch  parentage,"  said  the  university 
president.  "I  believe  he  is  one  of  the  Dum- 
farthings  of  Dumferline,  Dumfries." 

Everybody  said  "Oh,"  and  there  was  a  pause. 

"Is  he  married?"  asked  one  of  the  trustees. 
"I  understand,"  answered  Dr.  Boomer,  "that 
he  is  a  widower  with  one  child,  a  little  girl." 

"Does  he  make  any  conditions?" 

"None  whatever,"  said  the  chairman,  con- 
sulting a  letter  before  him,  "except  that  he  is 
to  have  absolute  control,  and  in  regard  to  sal- 
ary. These  two  points  settled,  he  says,  he 
places  himself  entirely  in  our  hands." 

"And  the  salary?"  asked  someone. 

"Ten  thousand  dollars,"  said  the  chairman, 
"payable  quarterly  in  advance." 

A  chorus  of  approval  went  round  the  table. 
"Good,"  "Excellent,"  "A  first-class  man,"  mut- 
tered the  trustees,  "just  what  we  want." 

"I  am  sure,  gentlemen,"  said  Mr.  Dick  Over- 
end,  voicing  the  sentiments  of  everybody,  "we 
do  not  want  a  cheap  man.  Several  of  the  can- 
23$ 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

didates  whose  names  have  been  under  consider- 
ation here  have  been  in  many  respects — in  point 
of  religious  qualification,  let  us  say — most  de- 
sirable men.  The  name  of  Dr.  McSkwirt,  for 
example,  has  been  mentioned  with  great  favour 
by  several  of  the  trustees.  But  he's  a  cheap 
man.     I  feel  we  don't  want  him." 

"What  is  Mr.  Dumfarthing  getting  where 
he  is?"  asked  Mr.  Boulder. 

"Nine  thousand  nine  hundred,"  said  the 
chairman. 

"And  Dr.  McSkwirt?" 

"Fourteen  hundred  dollars.'* 

"Well,  that  setdes  it!"  exclaimed  everybody 
with  a  burst  of  enlightenment. 

And  so  it  was  settled. 

In  fact,  nothing  could  have  been  plainer. 

"I  suppose,"  said  Mr.  George  Overend  as 
they  were  about  to  rise,  "that  we  are  quite 
justified  In  taking  it  for  granted  that  Dr.  Mc- 
Teague  will  never  be  able  to  resume  work?" 

"Oh,  absolutely  for  granted,"  said  Dr. 
Boomer.  "Poor  McTeaguel  I  hear  from 
Slyder  that  he  was  making  desperate  efforts  this 
morning  to  sit  up  in  bed.  His  nurse  with  diffi- 
culty prevented  him." 

"Is  his  power  of  speech  gone?'*  asked  Mr. 
Boulder. 

"Practically  so;  in  any  case,  Dr.  Slyder  in- 
sists on  his  not  using  it.     In  fact,  poor  Mc- 

336 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

Tcague's  mind  is  a  wreck.  His  nurse  was  tell- 
ing me  that  this  morning  he  was  reaching  out 
his  hand  for  the  newspaper,  and  seemed  to 
want  to  read  one  of  the  editorials.  It  was 
quite  pathetic,"  concluded  Dr.  Boomer,  shak- 
ing his  head. 

So  the  whole  matter  was  settled,  and  next 
day  all  the  town  knew  that  St.  Osoph's  Church 
had  extended  a  call  to  the  Rev.  Uttermust  Dum- 
farthing,  and  that  he  had  accepted  it. 

Within  a  few  weeks  of  this  date  the  Rever- 
end Uttermust  Dumfarthing  moved  into  the 
manse  of  St.  Osoph's  and  assumed  his  charge. 
And  forthwith  he  became  the  sole  topic  of 
conversation  on  Plutoria  Avenue.  "Have  you 
seen  the  new  minister  of  St.  Osoph's?"  every- 
body asked.  "Have  you  been  to  hear  Dr.  Dum- 
farthing?" "Were  you  at  St.  Osoph's  Church 
on  Sunday  morning?  Ah,  you  really  should 
go!  most  striking  sermon  I  ever  listened  to." 

The  effect  of  him  was  absolute  and  instan- 
taneous; there  was  no  doubt  of  it. 

"My  dear,"  said  Mrs.  Buncomhearst  to  one 
of  her  friends,  in  describing  how  she  had  met 
him,  "I  never  saw  a  more  striking  man.  Such 
power  in  his  face!  Mr.  Boulder  introduced 
him  to  me  on  the  avenue,  and  he  hardly  seemed 
to  see  me  at  all,  simply  scowled !  I  was  never 
so  favourably  impressed  with  any  man." 
237 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

On  his  very  first  Sunday  he  preached  to  his 
congregation  on  eternal  punishment,  leaning 
forward  in  his  black  gown  and  shaking  his  fist 
at  them.  Dr.  McTeague  had  never  shaken  his 
fist  in  thirty  years,  and  as  for  the  Rev.  Fare- 
forth  Furlong,  he  was  incapable  of  it. 

But  the  Rev.  Uttermust  Dumf  arthing  told  his 
congregation  that  he  was  convinced  that  at  least 
seventy  per  cent,  of  them  were  destined  for 
eternal  punishment;  and  he  didn't  call  it  by 
that  name,  but  labelled  it  simply  and  forcibly 
"hell."  The  word  had  not  been  heard  in  any 
church  in  the  better  part  of  the  City  for  a  gen- 
eration. The  congregation  was  so  swelled  next 
Sunday  that  the  minister  raised  the  percentage 
to  eighty-five,  and  everybody  went  away  de- 
lighted. Young  and  old  flocked  to  St.  Osoph's. 
Before  a  month  had  passed  the  congregation 
at  the  evening  service  at  St.  Asaph's  Church 
was  so  slender  that  the  offertory,  as  Mr. 
Furlong  senior  himself  calculated,  was  scarcely 
sufficient  to  pay  the  overhead  charge  of  collect- 
ing it. 

The  presence  of  so  many  young  men  sitting 
in  serried  files  close  to  the  front  was  the  only 
feature  of  his  congregation  that  extorted  from 
the  Rev.  Mr.  Dumfarthing  something  like  ap- 
proval. 

"It  is  joy  to  me  to  see,"  he  remarked  to  sev- 
eral of  his  trustees,  "that  there  are  in  the  City 

238 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

so  many  godly  young  men,  whatever  the  elders 
may  be." 

But  there  may  have  been  a  secondary  cause 
at  work,  for  among  the  godly  young  men  of 
Plutoria  Avenue  the  topic  of  conversation  had 
not  been,  "Have  you  heard  the  new  presby- 
terian  minister?"  but,  "Have  you  seen  his 
daughter?    You  haven' tf    Well,  say  I" 

For  it  turned  out  that  the  "child"  of  Dr. 
Uttermust  Dumfarthing,  so-called  by  the  trus- 
tees, was  the  kind  of  child  that  wears  a  little 
round  hat,  straight  from  Paris,  with  an  upright 
feather  in  it,  and  a  silk  dress  in  four  sections, 
and  shoes  with  high  heels  that  would  have 
broken  the  heart  of  John  Calvin.  Moreover, 
she  had  the  distinction  of  being  the  only  person 
on  Plutoria  Avenue  who  was  not  one  whit 
afraid  of  the  Reverend  Uttermust  Dumfarth- 
ing. She  even  amused  herself,  in  violation 
of  all  rules,  by  attending  evening  service 
at  St.  Asaph's,  where  she  sat  listening  to 
the  Reverend  Edward,  and  feeling  that  she 
had  never  heard  anything  so  sensible  in  her 
life. 

"I'm  simply  dying  to  meet  your  brother,"  she 
said  to  Mrs.  Tom  Overend,  otherwise  Philippa ; 
"he's  such  a  complete  contrast  with  father." 
She  knew  no  higher  form  of  praise.  "Father's 
sermons  are  always  so  frightfully  full  of  re- 
ligion." 

a39. 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

And  Phllippa  promised  that  meet  him  she 
should. 

But  whatever  may  have  been  the  effect  of  the 
presence  of  Catherine  Dumfarthing,  there  is  no 
doubt  the  greater  part  of  the  changed  situation 
was  due  to  Dr.  Dumfarthing  himself. 

Everything  he  did  was  calculated  to  please. 
He  preached  sermons  to  the  rich  and  told  them 
they  were  mere  cobwebs,  and  they  liked  it;  he 
preached  a  special  sermon  to  the  poor  and 
warned  them  to  be  mighty  careful;  he  gave  a 
series  of  weekly  talks  to  working  men,  and 
knocked  them  sideways;  and  in  the  Sunday 
School  he  gave  the  children  so  fierce  a  talk  on 
charity  and  the  need  of  giving  freely  and 
quickly,  that  such  a  stream  of  pennies  and 
nickels  poured  into  Catherine  Dumfarthing's 
Sunday  School  Fund  as  hadn't  been  seen  in  the 
church  in  fifty  years. 

Nor  was  Mr.  Dumfarthing  different  In  his 
private  walk  of  life.  He  was  heard  to  speak 
openly  of  the  Overend  brothers  as  "men  of 
wrath,"  and  they  were  so  pleased  that  they 
repeated  It  to  half  the  town.  It  was  the  best 
business  advertisement  they  had  had  for  years. 

Dr.  Boomer  was  captivated  with  the  man. 
"True  scholarship,"  he  murmured,  as  Dr.  Dum- 
farthing poured  undiluted  Greek  and  Hebrew 
from  the  pulpit,  scorning  to  translate  a  word 
of  it.     Under  Dr.  Boomer's  charge  the  min- 

240 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

ister  was  taken  over  the  length  and  breadth 
of  Plutoria  University,  and  reviled  it  from  the 
foundations  up. 

"Our  library,"  said  the  president,  "two  hun- 
dred thousand  volumes  1" 

"Aye,"  said  the  minister,  "a  powerful  heap 
of  rubbish,  I'll  be  bound  1" 

"The  photograph  of  our  last  year's  gradu- 
ating class,"  said  the  president. 

"A  poor  lot,  to  judge  by  the  faces  of  them," 
said  the  minister. 

"This,  Dr.  Dumfarthing,  is  our  new  radio- 
graphic laboratory;  Mr.  Spiff,  our  demon- 
strator, is  preparing  slides  which,  I  believe,  ac- 
tually show  the  movements  of  the  atom  itself, 
do  they  not,  Mr.  Spiff?" 

"Ah,"  said  the  minister,  piercing  Mr.  Spiff 
from  beneath  his  dark  brows,  "it  will  not  avail 
you,  young  man." 

Dr.  Boomer  was  delighted.  "Poor  Mc- 
Teague,"  he  said — "and  by  the  way,  Boyster,  I 
hear  that  McTeague  is  trying  to  walk  again; 
a  great  error,  it  shouldn't  be  allowed! — ^poor 
McTeague  knew  nothing  of  science." 

The  students  themselves  shared  in  the  en- 
thusiasm, especially  after  Dr.  Dumfarthing  had 
given  them  a  Sunday  afternoon  talk  in  which 
he  shewed  that  their  studies  were  absolutely 
futile.  As  soon  as  they  knew  this  they  went 
241 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

to  work  with  a  vigour  that  put  new  life  into 
the  college. 

•  •  •  •  • 

Meantime  the  handsome  face  of  the  Rever- 
end Edward  Fareforth  Furlong  began  to  wear 
a  sad  and  weary  look  that  had  never  been  seen 
on  it  before.  He  watched  his  congregation 
drifting  from  St.  Asaph's  to  St.  Osoph's  and 
was  powerless  to  prevent  it.  His  sadness 
reached  its  climax  one  bright  afternoon  in  the 
late  summer,  when  he  noticed  that  even  his 
episcopal  blackbirds  were  leaving  his  elms  and 
moving  westward  to  the  spruce  trees  of  the 
manse. 

He  stood  looking  at  them  with  melancholy 
on  his  face. 

"Why,  Edward,"  cried  his  sister  Philippa,  as 
her  motor  stopped  beside  him,  "how  doleful 
you  look !  Get  into  the  car  and  come  out  into 
the  country  for  a  ride.  Let  the  parish  teas  look 
after  themselves  for  to-day." 

Tom,  Philippa's  husband,  was  driving  his 
own  car — he  was  rich  enough  to  be  able  to — 
and  seated  with  Philippa  in  the  car  was  an 
unknown  person,  as  prettily  dressed  as  Philippa 
herself.  To  the  rector  she  was  presently  intro- 
duced as  Miss  Catherine  Something — he  didn't 
hear  the  rest  of  it.  Nor  did  he  need  to.  It 
was  quite  plain  that  her  surname,  whatever  it 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

was,    was   a   very   temporary   and    transitory 
affair. 

So  they  sped  rapidly  out  of  tfie  City  and 
away  out  into  tfie  country,  mile  after  mile, 
through  cool,  crisp  air,  and  among  woods  with 
the  touch  of  autumn  bright  already  upon  them, 
and  with  blue  sky  and  great  still  clouds  white 
overhead.  And  the  afternoon  was  so  beautiful 
and  so  bright  that  as  they  went  along  there 
was  no  talk  about  religion  at  all  I  nor  was  there 
any  mention  of  Mothers'  Auxiliaries,  or  Girls' 
Friendly  Societies,  nor  any  discussion  of  the 
poor.  It  was  too  glorious  a  day.  But  they 
spoke  instead  of  the  new  dances,  and  whether 
they  had  come  to  stay,  and  of  such  sensible 
topics  as  that.  Then  presently,  as  they  went 
on  still  further,  Philippa  leaned  forward  and 
talked  to  Tom  over  his  shoulder  and  reminded 
him  that  this  was  the  very  road  to  Castel  Cas- 
teggio,  and  asked  him  if  he  remembered  com- 
ing up  it  with  her  to  join  the  Newberrys  ever 
so  long  ago.  Whatever  it  was  that  Tom  an- 
swered it  is  not  recorded,  but  it  is  certain  that 
it  took  so  long  in  the  saying  that  the  Reverend 
Edward  talked  in  tete-a-tete  with  Catherine  for 
fifteen  measured  miles,  and  was  unaware  that 
it  was  more  than  five  minutes.  Among  other 
things  he  said,  and  she  agreed — or  she  said 
and  he  agreed — that  for  the  new  dances  it  was 
necessary  to  have  always  one  and  the  same 
243 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

partner,  and  to  keep  that  partner  all  the  time. 
And  somehow  simple  sentiments  of  that  sort, 
when  said  direct  into  a  pair  of  listening  blue 
eyes  behind  a  purple  motor  veil,  acquire  an 
infinite  significance. 

Then,  not  much  after  that,  say  three  or  four 
minutes,  they  were  all  of  a  sudden  back  in 
town  again,  running  along  Plutoria  Avenue, 
and  to  the  rector's  surprise  the  motor  was 
stopping  outside  the  manse,  and  Catherine  was 
saying,  "Oh,  thank  you  ever  so  much,  Philippa; 
it  was  just  heavenly!"  which  showed  that  the 
afternoon  had  had  its  religious  features  after 
all. 

"What!"  said  the  rector's  sister,  as  they 
moved  off  again,  "didn't  you  know?  That's 
Catherine  Dumfarthing!" 

When  the  Rev.  Fareforth  Furlong  arrived 
home  at  the  rectory  he  spent  an  hour  or  so  in 
the  deepest  of  deep  thought  in  an  arm-chair 
In  his  study.  Nor  was  it  any  ordinary  parish 
problem  that  he  was  revolving  in  his  mind. 
He  was  trying  to  think  out  some  means  by 
which  his  sister  Juliana  might  be  induced  to 
commit  the  sin  of  calling  on  the  daughter  of  a 
presbyterian  minister. 

The  thing  had  to  be  represented  as  in  some 
fashion  or  other  an  act  of  self-denial,  a  form  of 
mortification  of  the  flesh.    Otherwise  he  knew 

244 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

Juliana  would  never  do  it.  But  to  call  on  Miss 
Catherine  Dumfarthing  seemed  to  him  such  an 
altogether  delightful  and  unspeakably  blissful 
process  that  he  hardly  knew  how  to  approach 
the  topic.  So  when  Juliana  presently  came  home 
the  rector  could  find  no  better  way  of  intro- 
ducing the  subject  than  by  putting  it  on  the 
ground  of  Philippa's  marriage  to  Miss  Dum- 
farthing's  father's  trustee's  nephew. 

"Juliana,"  he  said,  "don't  you  think  that  per- 
haps, on  account  of  Philippa  and  Tom,  you 
ought — or  at  least  it  might  be  best — for  you  to 
call  on  Miss  Dumfarthing?" 

Juliana  turned  to  her  brother  as  she  laid 
aside  her  bonnet  and  her  black  gloves. 

"I've  just  been  there  this  afternoon,"  she 
said. 

There  was  something  as  near  to  a  blush  on 
her  face  as  her  brother  had  ever  seen. 

"But  she  was  not  there!"  he  said. 

"No,"  answered  Juliana,  "but  Mr.  Dum- 
farthing was.  I  stayed  and  talked  some  time 
with  him,  waiting  for  her." 

The  rector  gave  a  sort  of  whistle,  or  rather 
that  blowing  out  of  air  which  is  the  episcopal 
symbol  for  it. 

"Didn't  you  find  him  pretty  solemn?"  he  said. 

"Solemn  1"  answered  his  sister.  "Surely, 
Edward,  a  man  in  such  a  calling  as  his  ought 
to  be  solemn." 

24s 


Arcadian  Adventures  mth  the  Idle  Rick 

"I  don't  mean  that  exactly,"  said  the  rector; 
"I  mean — er — hard,  bitter,  so  to  speak." 

"Edward!"  exclaimed  Juliana,  "how  can  you 
speak  so.  Mr.  Dumf  arthing  hard  I  Mr.  Dum- 
farthing  bitter!  Why,  Edward,  the  man  is 
gentleness  and  kindness  itself.  I  don't  think  I 
ever  met  anyone  so  full  of  sympathy,  of  com- 
passion with  suffering." 

Juliana's  face  had  flushed.  It  was  quite  plain 
that  she  saw  things  in  the  Reverend  Uttermust 
Dumfarthing — as  some  one  woman  does  in 
every  man — that  no  one  else  could  see. 

The  Reverend  Edward  was  abashed.  "I 
wasn't  thinking  of  his  character,"  he  said.  "I 
was  thinking  rather  of  his  doctrines.  Wait  till 
you  have  heard  him  preach." 

Juliana  flushed  more  deeply  still.  "I  heard 
him  last  Sunday  evening,"  she  said. 

The  rector  was  silent,  and  his  sister,  as  if 
impelled  to  speak,  went  on, 

"And  I  don't  see,  Edward,  how  anyone  could 
think  him  a  hard  or  bigoted  man  in  his  creed. 
He  walked  home  with  me  to  the  gate  just  now, 
and  he  was  speaking  of  all  the  sin  in  the  world, 
and  of  how  few,  how  very  few  people,  can  be 
saved,  and  how  many  will  have  to  be  burned 
as  worthless ;  and  he  spoke  so  beautifully.  He 
regrets  it,  Edward,  regrets  it  deeply.  It  is  a 
real  grief  to  him." 

On  which  Juliana,  half  in  anger,  withdrew, 
346 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

and  her  brother  the  rector  sat  back  In  his  chair 
with  smiles  rippling  all  over  his  saintly  face. 
For  he  had  been  wondering  whether  it  would 
be  possible,  even  remotely  possible,  to  get  his 
sister  to  invite  the  Dumfarthings  to  high  tea 
at  the  rectory  some  day  at  six  o'clock  (evening 
dinner  was  out  of  the  question),  and  now  he 
knew  within  himself  that  the  thing  was  as  good 
as  done. 

•  •  •  •  • 

While  such  things  as  these  were  happening 
and  about  to  happen,  there  were  many  others 
of  the  congregation  of  St.  Asaph's  beside  the 
rector  to  whom  the  growing  situation  gave  cause 
for  serious  perplexities.  Indeed,  all  who  were 
interested  in  the  church,  the  trustees  and  the 
mortgagees  and  the  underlying  debenture-hold- 
ers, were  feeling  anxious.  For  some  of  them 
underlay  the  Sunday  School,  whose  scholars* 
offerings  had  declined  forty  per  cent,  and  others 
underlay  the  new  organ,  not  yet  paid  for,  while 
others  were  lying  deeper  still  beneath  the 
ground  site  of  the  church  with  seven  dollars 
and  a  half  a  square  foot  resting  on  them. 

"I  don't  like  it,"  said  Mr.  LucuUus  Fyshe 
to  Mr.  Newberry  (they  were  both  prominent 
members  of  the  congregation).  "I  don't  like 
the  look  of  things.  I  took  up  a  block  of  Fur- 
long's bonds  on  his  Guild  building  from  what 
seemed  at  the  time  the  best  of  motives.  The 
247 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

interest  appeared  absolutely  certain.  Now  it's 
a  month  overdue  on  the  last  quarter.  I  feel 
alarmed." 

"Neither  do  I  like  it,"  said  Mr.  Newberry, 
shaking  his  head;  "and  I'm  sorry  for  Fareforth 
Furlong.  An  excellent  fellow,  Fyshe,  excellent. 
I  keep  wondering,  Sunday  after  Sunday,  if  there 
isn't  something  I  can  do  to  help  him  out.  One 
might  do  something  further  perhaps  in  the  way 
of  new  buildings  or  alterations.  I  have,  in  fact, 
offered — by  myself,  I  mean,  and  without  other 
aid — to  dynamite  out  the  front  of  his  church, 
underpin  it,  and  put  him  in  a  Norman  gateway ; 
either  that,  or  blast  out  the  back  of  it  where 
the  choir  sit,  just  as  he  likes.  I  was  thinking 
about  it  last  Sunday  as  they  were  singing  the 
anthem,  and  realising  what  a  lot  one  might  do 
there  with  a  few  sticks  of  dynamite." 

"I  doubt  it,"  said  Mr.  Fyshe.  "In  fact,  New- 
berry, to  speak  very  frankly,  I  begin  to  ask 
myself,  Is  Furlong  the  man  for  the  post?" 

"Oh,  surely,"  said  Mr.  Newberry  in  protest. 

"Personally  a  charming  fellow,"  went  on  Mr. 
Fyshe;  "but  is  he,  all  said  and  done,  quite  the 
man  to  conduct  a  church  ?  In  the  first  place,  he 
is  not  a  business  man." 

"No,"  said  Mr.  Newberry  reluctantly,  "that 
I  admit." 

"Very  good.  And,  secondly,  even  in  the  mat- 
ter of  his  religion  itself,  one  always  feels  as  if 

248 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

he  were  too  little  fixed,  too  unstable.  He  simply 
moves  with  the  times.  That,  at  least,  is  what 
people  are  beginning  to  say  of  him,  that  he  is 
perpetually  moving  with  the  times.  It  doesn't 
do,  Newberry,  it  doesn't  do." 

Whereupon  Mr.  Newberry  went  away  trou- 
bled and  wrote  to  Fareforth  Furlong  a  confi- 
dential letter  with  a  signed  cheque  in  it  for  the 
amount  of  Mr.  Fyshe's  interest,  and  with  such 
further  offerings  of  dynamite,  of  underpinning 
and  blasting  as  his  conscience  prompted. 

When  the  rector  received  and  read  the  note 
and  saw  the  figures  of  the  cheque,  there  arose 
such  a  thankfulness  in  his  spirit  as  he  hadn't 
felt  for  months,  and  he  may  well  have  mur- 
mured, for  the  repose  of  Mr.  Newberry's  soul, 
a  prayer  not  found  in  the  rubric  of  King  James. 

All  the  more  cause  had  he  to  feel  light  at 
heart,  for  as  it  chanced  it  was  on  that  same 
evening  that  the  Dumfarthings,  father  and 
daughter,  were  to  take  tea  at  the  rectory.  In- 
deed, a  few  minutes  before  six  o'clock  they 
might  have  been  seen  making  their  way  from 
the  manse  to  the  rectory. 

On  their  way  along  the  avenue  the  minister 
took  occasion  to  reprove  his  daughter  for  the 
worldliness  of  her  hat  (it  was  a  little  trifle  from 
New  York  that  she  had  bought  out  of  the  Sun- 
day School  money, — a  temporary  loan)  ;  and  a 
little  further  on  he  spoke  to  her  severely  about 
249 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Eich 

the  parasol  she  carried;  and  further  yet  about 
the  strange  fashion,  specially  condemned  by  the 
Old  Testament,  in  which  she  wore  her  hair. 
So  Catherine  knew  in  her  heart  from  this  that 
she  must  be  looking  her  very  prettiest,  and  went 
into  the  rectory  radiant. 

The  tea  was,  of  course,  an  awkward  meal  at 
the  best.  There  was  an  initial  difficulty  about 
grace,  not  easily  surmounted.  And  when  the 
Rev.  Mr.  Dumfarthing  sternly  refused  tea  as  a 
pernicious  drink  weakening  to  the  system,  the 
Anglican  rector  was  too  ignorant  of  the  pre&- 
byterian  system  to  know  enough  to  give  him 
Scotch  whiskey. 

But  there  were  bright  spots  in  the  meal  as 
well.  The  rector  was  even  able  to  ask  Cath- 
erine, sideways  as  a  personal  question,  if  she 
played  tennis;  and  she  was  able  to  whisper  be- 
hind her  hand,  "Not  allowed,"  and  to  make  a 
face  in  the  direction  of  her  father,  who  was 
absorbed  for  the  moment  in  a  theological  ques^ 
tion  with  Juliana.  Indeed,  before  the  conver- 
sation became  general  again  the  rector  had 
contrived  to  make  a  rapid  arrangement  with 
Catherine  whereby  she  was  to  come  with  him 
to  the  Newberrys'  tennis  court  the  day  follow- 
ing and  learn  the  game,  with  or  without  per- 
mission. 

So  the  tea  was  perhaps  a  success  in  its  way. 
And  it  is  noteworthy  that  Juliana  spent  the 

250 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

days  that  followed  It  In  reading  Calvin's  "Insti- 
tutes" (specially  loaned  to  her)  and  "Dum- 
farthlng  on  the  Certainty  of  Damnation"  (a 
gift),  and  in  praying  for  her  brother — a  task 
practically  without  hope.  During  which  same 
time  the  rector  in  white  flannels,  and  Catherine 
in  a  white  duck  skirt  and  blouse,  were  flying 
about  on  the  green  grass  of  the  Newberrys' 
court,  and  calling,  "love,"  "love  all,"  to  one 
another  so  gayly  and  so  brazenly  that  even  Mr. 
Newberry  felt  that  there  must  be  something 
in  it. 

But  all  these  things  came  merely  as  inter- 
ludes in  the  moving  currents  of  greater  events; 
for  as  the  summer  faded  into  autumn  and 
autumn  Into  winter  the  anxieties  of  the  trus- 
tees of  St.  Asaph's  began  to  call  for  action 
of  some  sort. 

•  •  •  .  • 

"Edward,"  said  the  rector's  father  on  the 
occasion  of  their  next  quarterly  discussion,  "I 
cannot  conceal  from  you  that  the  position  of 
things  is  very  serious.  Your  statements  show  a 
falling  off  in  every  direction.  Your  interest  is 
everywhere  In  arrears;  your  current  account 
overdrawn  to  the  limit.  At  this  rate,  you  know, 
the  end  is  inevitable.  Your  debenture  and 
bondholders  will  decide  to  foreclose;  and  if 
they  do,  you  know,  there  is  no  power  that  can 
stop  them.  Even  with  your  limited  knowledge 
251 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

of  business  you  are  probably  aware  that  there 
is  no  higher  power  that  can  Influence  or  con- 
trol the  holder  of  a  first  mortgage." 

"I  fear  so,"  said  the  Rev.  Edward  very  sadly. 

"Do  you  not  think  perhaps  that  some  of  the 
shortcoming  lies  with  yourself?"  continued  Mr. 
Furlong.  "Is  It  not  possible  that  as  a  preacher 
you  fall  somewhat,  do  not,  as  It  were,  deal 
sufficiently  with  fundamental  things  as  others 
do  ?  You  leave  untouched  the  truly  vital  Issues, 
such  things  as  the  creation,  death,  and.  If  I  may 
refer  to  It,  the  life  beyond  the  grave." 

As  a  result  of  which  the  Reverend  Edward 
preached  a  series  of  special  sermons  on  the 
creation,  for  which  he  made  a  special  and  ardu- 
ous preparation  In  the  library  of  Plutoria  Uni- 
versity. He  said  that  It  had  taken  a  million, 
possibly  a  hundred  million,  years  of  quite  diffi- 
cult work  to  accomplish,  and  that  though  when 
we  looked  at  it  all  was  darkness  still  we  could 
not  be  far  astray  if  we  accepted  and  held  fast 
to  the  teachings  of  Sir  Charles  Lyell.  The 
book  of  Genesis,  he  said,  was  not  to  be  taken 
as  meaning  a  day  when  it  said  a  day,  but  rather 
something  other  than  a  mere  day ;  and  the  word 
"light"  meant  not  exactly  light,  but  possibly 
some  sort  of  phosphorescence,  and  that  the  use 
of  the  word  "darkness"  was  to  be  understood 
not  as  meaning  darkness,  but  to  be  taken  as 
simply  indicating  obscurity.    And  when  he  had 

252 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

quite  finished,  the  congregation  declared  the 
whole  sermon  to  be  mere  milk  and  water.  It 
insulted  their  intelligence,  they  said.  After 
which,  a  week  later,  the  Rev.  Dr.  Dumfarthing 
took  up  the  same  subject,  and  with  the  aid  of 
seven  plain  texts  pulverised  the  rector  into  frag- 
ments. 

One  notable  result  of  the  controversy  was 
that  Juliana  Furlong  refused  henceforth  to  at- 
tend her  brother's  church  and  sat,  even  at  morn- 
ing service,  under  the  minister  of  St.  Osoph's. 

"The  sermon  was,  I  fear,  a  mistake,"  said 
Mr.  Furlong  senior;  "perhaps  you  had  better 
not  dwell  too  much  on  such  topics.  We  must 
look  for  aid  in  another  direction.  In  fact,  Ed- 
ward, I  may  mention  to  you  in  confidence  that 
certain  of  your  trustees  are  already  devising 
ways  and  means  that  may  help  us  out  of  our 
dilemma." 

Indeed,  although  the  Reverend  Edward  did 
not  know  it,  a  certain  idea,  or  plan,  was  already 
germinating  in  the  minds  of  the  most  influential 
supporters  of  St.  Asaph's. 

•  •  •  •  • 

Such  was  the  situation  of  the  rival  churches 
of  St.  Asaph  and  St.  Osoph  as  the  autumn 
slowly  faded  into  winter:  during  which  time 
the  elm  trees  on  Plutoria  Avenue  shivered  and 
dropped  their  leaves  and  the  chauffeurs  of  the 
motors  first  turned  blue  in  their  faces  and  then, 
when  the  great  snows  came,  were  suddenly  con- 

2SS 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

verted  Into  liveried  coachmen  with  tall  bear- 
skins and  whiskers  like  Russian  horseguards, 
changing  back  again  to  blue-nosed  chauffeurs 
the  very  moment  of  a  thaw.  During  this  time 
also  the  congregation  of  the  Reverend  Fare- 
forth  Furlong  was  diminishing  month  by 
month,  and  that  of  the  Reverend  Uttermust 
Dumfarthing  was  so  numerous  that  they  filled 
up  the  aisles  at  the  back  of  the  church.  Here 
the  worshippers  stood  and  froze,  for  the  minis- 
ter had  abandoned  the  use  of  steam  heat  in  St. 
Osoph's  on  the  ground  that  he  could  find  no 
warrant  for  it. 

During  this  same  period  other  momentous 
things  were  happening,  such  as  that  Juliana 
Furlong  was  reading,  under  the  immediate 
guidance  of  Dr.  Dumfarthing,  the  History  of 
the  Progress  of  Disruption  in  the  Churches  of 
Scotland  in  ten  volumes;  such  also  as  that 
Catherine  Dumfarthing  was  wearing  a  green 
and  gold  winter  suit  with  Russian  furs  and  a 
Balkan  hat  and  a  Circassian  feather,  which  cut 
a  wide  swath  of  destruction  among  the  young 
men  on  Plutoria  Avenue  every  afternoon  as  she 
passed.  Moreover  by  the  strangest  of  coin- 
cidences she  scarcely  ever  seemed  to  come  along 
the  snow-covered  avenue  without  meeting  the 
Reverend  Edward, — a  fact  which  elicited  new 
exclamations  of  surprise  from  them  both  every 
day :  and  by  an  equally  strange  coincidence  they 

2S4 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

generally  seemed,  although  coming  in  different 
directions,  to  be  bound  for  the  same  place;  to- 
wards which  they  wandered  together  with  such 
slow  steps  and  in  such  oblivion  of  the  passers-by 
that  even  the  children  on  the  avenue  knew  by 
instinct  whither  they  were  wandering. 

It  was  noted  also  that  the  broken  figure  of 
Dr.  McTeague  had  reappeared  upon  the 
street,  leaning  heavily  upon  a  stick  and  greeting 
those  he  met  with  such  a  meek  and  willing 
affability,  as  if  in  apology  for  his  stroke  of 
paralysis,  that  all  who  talked  with  him  agreed 
that  McTeague's  mind  was  a  wreck. 

"He  stood  and  spoke  to  me  about  the  chil- 
dren for  at  least  a  quarter  of  an  hour,"  related 
one  of  his  former  parishioners,  "asking  after 
them  by  name,  and  whether  they  were  going  to 
school  yet  and  a  lot  of  questions  like  that.  He 
never  used  to  speak  of  such  things.  Poor  old 
McTeague,  I'm  afraid  he  is  getting  soft  in  the 
head."  "I  know,"  said  the  person  addressed. 
"His  mind  is  no  good.  He  stopped  me  the 
other  day  to  say  how  sorry  he  was  to  hear  about 
my  brother's  illness.  I  could  see  from  the  way 
he  spoke  that  his  brain  is  getting  feeble.  He's 
losing  his  grip.  He  was  speaking  of  how  kind 
people  had  been  to  him  after  his  accident  and 
there  were  tears  in  his  eyes.  I  think  he's  get- 
ting batty." 

Nor  were  even  these  things  the  most  mo- 
255 


Arcadian  Adventures  'with  the  Idle  Rich 

mentous  happenings  of  the  period.  For  as  win- 
ter slowly  changed  to  early  spring  it  became 
known  that  something  of  great  portent  was 
under  way.  It  was  rumoured  that  the  trus- 
tees of  St.  Asaph's  Church  were  putting  their 
heads  together.  This  was  striking  news.  The 
last  time  that  the  head  of  Mr.  LucuUus  Fyshe, 
for  example,  had  been  placed  side  by  side  with 
that  of  Mr.  Newberry,  there  had  resulted  a 
merger  of  four  soda-water  companies,  bring- 
ing what  was  called  industrial  peace  over  an 
area  as  big  as  Texas  and  raising  the  price  of 
soda  by  three  peaceful  cents  per  bottle.  And 
the  last  time  that  Mr.  Furlong  senior's  head 
had  been  laid  side  by  side  with  those  of  Mr. 
Rasselyer-Brown  and  Mr.  Skinyer,  they  had 
practically  saved  the  country  from  the  horrors 
of  a  coal  famine  by  the  simple  process  of  rais- 
ing the  price  of  nut  coal  seventy-five  cents  a  ton 
and  thus  guaranteeing  its  abundance. 

Naturally,  therefore,  when  it  became  known 
that  such  redoubtable  heads  as  those  of  the 
trustees  and  the  underlying  mortgagees  of  St. 
Asaph's  were  being  put  together,  it  was  fully 
expected  that  some  important  development 
would  follow.  It  was  not  accurately  known 
from  which  of  the  assembled  heads  first  pro- 
ceeded the  great  idea  which  was  presently  to 
solve  the  difficulties  of  the  church.  It  may  well 
have  come  from  that  of  Mr.  Lucullus  Fyshe, 

256 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

Certainly  a  head  which  had  brought  peace  out 
of  civil  war  in  the  hardware  business  by  amal- 
gamating ten  rival  stores  and  had  saved  the 
very  lives  of  five  hundred  employees  by  reduc- 
ing their  wages  fourteen  per  cent,  was  capable 
of  It. 

At  any  rate  It  was  Mr.  Fyshe  who  first  gave 
the  Idea  a  definite  utterance. 

"It's  the  only  thing,  Furlong,"  he  said,  across 
the  lunch  table  at  the  Mausoleum  Club.  "It's 
the  one  solution.  The  two  churches  can't  live 
under  the  present  conditions  of  competition. 
We  have  here  practically  the  same  situation  as 
we  had  with  the  two  rum  distilleries, — the  out- 
put Is  too  large  for  the  demand.  One  or  both 
of  the  two  concerns  must  go  under.  It's  their 
turn  just  now,  but  these  fellows  are  business 
men  enough  to  know  that  it  may  be  ours  to- 
morrow. We'll  offer  them  a  business  solu- 
tion.   We'll  propose  a  merger." 

"I've  been  thinking  of  it,"  said  Mr.  Furlong 
senior,  "I  suppose  It's  feasible?" 

"Feasible!"  exclaimed  Mr.  Fyshe.  "Why 
look  what's  being  done  every  day  everywhere, 
from  the  Standard  Oil  Company  downwards." 

"You  would  hardly,  I  think,"  said  Mr.  Fur- 
long, with  a  quiet  smile,  "compare  the  Standard 
Oil  Company  to  a  church?" 

"Well,  no,  I  suppose  not,"  said  Mr.  Fyshe, 
and  he  too  smiled, — in  fact  he  almost  laughed. 
3SZ 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

The  notion  was  ioo  ridiculous.  One  could 
hardly  compare  a  mere  church  to  a  thing  of 
the  magnitude  and  importance  of  the  Standard 
Oil  Company. 

"But  on  a  lesser  scale,"  continued  Mr.  Fyshe, 
"it's  the  same  sort  of  thing.  As  for  the  diffi- 
culties of  it,  I  needn't  remind  you  of  the  much 
greater  difficulties  we  had  to  grapple  with  in 
the  rum  merger.  There,  you  remember,  a  num- 
ber of  the  women  held  out  as  a  m,atter  of  prin- 
ciple. It  was  not  mere  business  with  them. 
Church  union  is  different.  In  fact  it  is  one  of 
the  ideas  of  the  day  and  everyone  admits  that 
what  is  needed  is  the  application  of  the  ordi- 
nary business  principles  of  harmonious  com- 
bination, with  a  proper — er — restriction  of  out- 
put and  general  economy  of  operation." 

"Very  good,"  said  Mr.  Furlong,  "I'm  sure 
If  you're  willing  to  try,  the  rest  of  us  are." 

"All  right,"  said  Mr.  Fyshe.  "I  thought  of 
setting  Sklnyer,  of  Sklnyer  and  Beatem,  to  work 
on  the  form  of  the  organisation.  As  you  know 
he  Is  not  only  a  deeply  religious  man  but  he 
has  already  handled  the  Tin  Pot  Combina- 
tion and  the  United  Hardware  and  the  Asso- 
ciated Tanneries.  He  ought  to  find  this  quite 
simple." 

.  •  •  •  • 

Within  a  day  or  two  Mr.  Sklnyer  had  already 
commenced  his  labours.    "I  must  first,"  he  said, 

258 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

"get  an  accurate  idea  of  the  existing  legal  or- 
ganisation of  the  two  churches." 

For  which  purpose  he  approached  the  rector 
of  St.  Asaph's. 

"I  just  want  to  ask  you,  Mr.  Furlong,"  said 
the  lawyer,  "a  question  or  two  as  to  the  exact 
constitution,  the  form  so  to  speak,  of  your 
church.  What  is  it?  Is  it  a  single  corporate 
body?" 

"I  suppose,"  said  the  rector  thoughtfully, 
"one  would  define  it  as  an  indivisible  spiritual 
unit  manifesting  itself  on  earth." 

"Quite  so,"  interrupted  Mr.  Skinyer,  "but  I 
don't  mean  what  it  is  in  the  religious  sense: 
I  mean,  in  the  real  sense."  "I  fail  to  under- 
stand," said  Mr.  Furlong. 

"Let  me  put  it  very  clearly,"  said  the  law- 
yer.    "Where  does  it  get  its  authority?" 

"From  above,"  said  the  rector  reverently. 

"Precisely,"  said  Mr.  Skinyer,  "no  doubt,  but 
I  mean  its  authority  In  the  exact  sense  of  the 
term." 

"It  was  enjoined  on  St.  Peter,"  began  the 
rector,  but  Mr.  Skinyer  interrupted  him. 

"That  I  am  aware  of,"  he  said,  "but  what 
I  mean  is, — where  does  your  church  get  its 
power,  for  example,  to  hold  property,  to  col- 
lect debts,  to  use  distraint  against  the  prop- 
erty of  others,  to  foreclose  its  mortgages  and 
to  cause  judgment  to  be  executed  against  those 
359 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

who  fail  to  pay  their  debts  to  it?  You  will 
say  at  once  that  it  has  these  powers  direct 
from  Heaven.  No  doubt  that  is  true  and  no 
religious  person  would  deny  it.  But  we  law- 
yers are  compelled  to  take  a  narrower,  a  less 
elevating  point  of  view.  Are  these  powers 
conferred  on  you  by  the  state  legislature  or 
by  some  higher  authority?" 

"Oh  by  a  higher  authority,  I  hope,"  said 
the  rector  very  fervently.  Whereupon  Mr. 
Skinyer  left  him  without  further  questioning, 
the  rector's  brain  being  evidently  unfit  for  the 
subject  of  corporation  law. 

On  the  other  hand  he  got  satisfaction  from 
the  Rev.   Dr.  Dumfarthing  at  once. 

"The  church  of  St.  Osoph,"  said  the  min- 
ister, "is  a  perpetual  trust,  holding  property 
as  such  under  a  general  law  of  the  state  and 
able  as  such  to  be  made  the  object  of  suit  or 
distraint.  I  speak  with  some  assurance  as  I 
had  occasion  to  enquire  into  the  matter  at 
the  time  when  I  was  looking  for  guidance  in 
regard  to  the  call  I  had  received  to  come 
here." 

•  •  •  •  • 

"It's  a  quite  simple  matter,"  Mr.  Skinyer 
presently  reported  to  Mr.  Fyshe.  "One  of  the 
churches  is  a  perpetual  trust,  the  other  prac- 
tically a  state  corporation.  Each  has  full  con- 
trol over  its  property  provided  nothing  is  done 

260 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

by  either  to  infringe  the  purity  of  its  doc- 
trine." 

"Just  what  does  that  mean?"  asked  Mr. 
Fyshe. 

"It  must  maintain  its  doctrine  absolutely 
pure.  Otherwise  if  certain  of  Its  trustees  re- 
main pure  and  the  rest  do  not,  those  who  stay 
pure  are  entitled  to  take  the  whole  of  the  prop- 
erty. This,  I  believe,  happens  every  day  in 
Scotland  where,  of  course,  there  is  great 
eagerness  to  remain  pure  in  doctrine." 

"And  what  do  you  define  as  pure  doctrine  f 
asked  Mr.  Fyshe. 

"If  the  trustees  are  in  dispute,"  said  Mr. 
Skinyer,  "the  courts  decide,  but  any  doctrine 
is  held  to  be  a  pure  doctrine  if  all  the  trustees 
regard  it  as  a  pure  doctrine." 

"I  see,"  said  Mr.  Fyshe  thoughtfully,  "it's 
the  same  thing  as  what  we  called  'permissible 
policy'  on  the  part  of  directors  in  the  Tin  Pot 
Combination." 

"Exactly,"  assented  Mr.  Skinyer,  "and  it 
means  that  for  the  merger  we  need  nothing, — I 
state  it  very  frankly, — except  general  consent. 

The  preliminary  stages  of  the  making  of 
the  merger  followed  along  familiar  business 
lines.  The  trustees  of  St.  Asaph's  went 
through  the  process  known  as  'approaching' 
the  trustees  of  St.  Osoph's.  First  of  all,  for 
261 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

example,  Mr.  Lucullus  Fyshe  invited  Mr.  As- 
modeus  Boulder  of  St.  Osoph's  to  lunch  with 
him  at  the  Mausoleum  Club;  the  cost  of  the 
lunch,  as  is  usual  in  such  cases,  was  charged 
to  the  general  expense  account  of  the  church. 
Of  course  nothing  whatever  was  said  during  the 
lunch  about  the  churches  or  their  finances  or 
anything  concerning  them.  Such  discussion 
would  have  been  a  gross  business  impropriety. 
A  few  days  later  the  two  brothers  Overend 
dined  with  Mr.  Furlong  senior,  the  dinner 
being  charged  directly  to  the  contingencies 
account  of  St.  Asaph's.  After  which  Mr. 
Skinyer  and  his*  partner,  Mr.  Beatem,  went  to 
the  spring  races  together  on  the  Profit  and  Loss 
account  of  St.  Osoph's,  and  Philippa  Overend 
and  Catherine  Dumfarthing  were  taken  (by 
the  Unforeseen  Disbursements  Account)  to  the 
grand  opera,  followed  by  a  midnight  supper. 
All  of  these  things  constituted  what  was 
called  the  promotion  of  the  merger  and  were 
almost  exactly  identical  with  the  successive 
stages  of  the  making  of  the  Amalgamated  Dis- 
tilleries and  the  Associated  Tin  Pot  Corpora- 
tion; which  was  considered ,  a  most  hopeful 
sign. 

•  •  •  •  • 

"Do  you  think  they'll  go  into  it?"  asked  Mr. 
Newberry  of  Mr.  Furlong  senior,  anxiously. 
"After  all,  what  inducement  have  they?" 

262 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

"Every  inducement,"  said  Mr.  Furlong.  "All 
said  and  done  they've  only  one  large  asset, — 
Dr.  Dumfarthing.  We're  really  offering  to 
buy  up  Dr.  Dumfarthing  by  pooling  our  assets 
with  theirs." 

"And  what  does  Dr.  Dumfarthing  himself 
say  to  it?" 

"Ah,  there  I  am  not  so  sure,'*  said  Mr.  Fur- 
long; "that  may  be  a  difficulty.  So  far  there 
hasn't  been  a  word  from  him,  and  his  trus- 
tees are  absolutely  silent  about  his  views.  How- 
ever, we  shall  soon  know  all  about  it.  Skin- 
yer  is  asking  us  all  to  come  together  one  even- 
ing next  week  to  draw  up  the  articles  of  agree- 
ment." 

"Has  he  got  the  financial  basis  arranged 
then?" 

"I  believe  so,"  said  Mr.  Furlong.  "His  idea 
is  to  form  a  new  corporation  to  be  known  as 
the  United  Church  Limited  or  by  some  simi- 
lar name.  All  the  present  mortgagees  will  be 
converted  into  unified  bondholders,  the  pew 
rents  Will  be  capitalised  into  preferred  stock 
and  the  common  stock,  drawing  its  dividend 
from  the  offertory,  will  be  distributed  among 
all  members  in  standing.  Skinyer  says  that 
it  is  really  an  ideal  form  of  church  union, 
one  that  he  thinks  is  likely  to  be  widely  adopted. 
It  has  the  advantages  of  removing  all  ques- 
tions of  religion,  which  he  says  are  practically 
263 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

the  only  remaining  obstacle  to  a  union  of  all 
the  churches.  In  fact  it  puts  the  churches  once 
and  for  all  on  a  business  basis." 

"But  what  about  the  question  of  doctrine,  of 
belief?"  asked  Mr.  Newberry. 

"Skinyer  says  he  can  settle  it,"  answered 
Mr.  Furlong. 

About  a  week  after  the  above  conversation 
the  united  trustees  of  St.  Asaph's  and  St. 
Osoph's  were  gathered  about  a  huge  egg-shaped 
table  in  the  board  room  of  the  Mausoleum 
Club.  They  were  seated  in  intermingled  fashion 
after  the  precedent  of  the  recent  Tin  Pot  Amal- 
gamation and  were  smoking  huge  black  cigars 
specially  kept  by  the  club  for  the  promotion  of 
companies  and  chargeable  to  expenses  of  or- 
ganisation at  fifty  cents  a  cigar.  There  was  an 
air  of  deep  peace  brooding  over  the  assembly, 
as  among  men  who  have  accomplished  a  diffi- 
cult and  meritorious  task. 

"Well,  then,"  said  Mr.  Skinyer,  who  was  in 
the  chair,  with  a  pile  of  documents  in  front 
of  him,  "I  think  that  our  general  basis  of 
financial  union  may  be  viewed  as  settled." 

A  murmur  of  assent  went  round  the  meeting. 
"The  terms  are  set  forth  in  the  memorandum 
before  us,  which  you  have  already  signed.  Only 
one  other  point, — a  minor  one, — remains  to  be 

264 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

considered.     I  refer  to  the  doctrines  or  the 
religious  belief  of  the  new  amalgamation." 

"Is  it  necessary  to  go  into  that?"  asked  Mr. 
Boulder. 

"Not  entirely,  perhaps,"  said  Mr.  Skinyer. 
"Still  there  have  been,  as  you  all  know,  cer- 
tain points, — I  won't  say  of  disagreement, — 
but  let  us  say  of  friendly  argument, — ^between 
the  members  of  the  different  churches, — such 
things  for  example,"  here  he  consulted  his 
papers,  "as  the  theory  of  the  creation,  the  sal- 
vation of  the  soul,  and  so  forth,  have  been 
mentioned  in  this  connection.  I  have  a  memo- 
randum of  them  here,  though  the  points  escape 
me  for  the  moment.  These,  you  may  say,  are 
not  matters  of  first  importance,  especially  as 
compared  with  the  intricate  financial  questions 
which  we  have  already  settled  in  a  satisfactory 
manner.  Still  I  think  it  might  be  well  if  I 
were  permitted  with  your  unanimous  approval 
to  jot  down  a  memorandum  or  two  to  be  after- 
wards embodied  in  our  articles." 

There  was  a  general  murmur  of  approval. 

"Very  good,"  said  Mr.  Skinyer,  settling  him- 
self back  in  his  chair.  "Now,  first,  in  regard 
to  the  creation,"  here  he  looked  all  round  the 
meeting  in  a  way  to  command  attention, — "Is 
it  your  wish  that  we  should  leave  that  merely 
to  a  gentlemen's  agreement  or  do  you  want 
an  explicit  clause?" 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

"I  think  it  might  be  well,"  said  Mr.  Dick 
Overend,  "to  leave  no  doubt  about  the  theory 
of  the  creation." 

"Good,"  said  Mr.  Skinyer.  "I  am  going 
to  put  it  down  then  something  after  this  fashion : 
*On  and  after,  let  us  say,  August  ist  proximo, 
the  process  of  the  creation  shall  be  held,  and 
is  hereby  held,  to  be  such  and  such  only  as 
is  acceptable  to  a  majority  of  the  holders  of 
common  and  preferred  stock  voting  pro  rata. 
Is  that  agreed?" 

"Carried,"  cried  several  at  once. 

"Carried,"  repeated  Mr.  Skinyer.  "Now  let 
us  pass  on," — here  he  consulted  his  notes, — "to 
item  two,  eternal  punishment.  I  have  made  a 
memorandum  as  follows,  'Should  any  doubts 
arise,  on  or  after  August  first  proximo,  as  to 
the  existence  of  eternal  punishment  they  shall 
be  settled  absolutely  and  finally  by  a  pro  rata 
vote  of  all  the  holders  of  common  and  pre- 
ferred stock.'     Is  that  agreed?" 

"One  moment!"  said  Mr.  Fyshe,  "do  you 
think  that  quite  fair  to  the  bondholders  ?  After 
all,  as  the  virtual  holders  of  the  property,  they 
are  the  persons  most  interested.  I  should  like 
to  amend  your  clause  and  make  it  read, — I  am 
not  phrasing  it  exactly  but  merely  giving  the 
sense  of  it, — that  eternal  punishment  should 
be  reserved  for  the  mortgagees  and  bond- 
holders." 

266 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

At  this  there  was  an  outbreak  of  mingled 
approval  and  dissent,  several  persons  speaking 
at  once.  In  the  opinion  of  some,  the  stock- 
holders of  the  company,  especially  the  pre- 
ferred stockholders,  had  as  good  a  right  to 
eternal  punishment  as  the  bondholders.  Pres- 
ently Mr.  Skinyer,  who  had  been  busily  writing 
notes,  held  up  his  hand  for  silence. 

"Gentlemen,"  he  said,  "will  you  accept  this 
as  a  compromise?  We  will  keep  the  original 
clause  but  merely  add  to  it  the  words,  'but  no 
form  of  eternal  punishment  shall  be  declared 
valid  if  displeasing  to  a  three-fifths  majority 
of  the  holders  of  bonds.'  " 

"Carried,  carried,"  cried  everybody. 

"To  which  I  think  we  need  only  add,"  said 
Mr.  Skinyer,  "a  clause  to  the  effect  that  all 
other  points  of  doctrine,  belief  or  religious 
principle  may  be  freely  altered,  amended,  re- 
versed or  entirely  abolished  at  any  general 
annual  meeting!" 

There  was  a  renewed  chorus  of  "Carried, 
carried,"  and  the  trustees  rose  from  the  table 
shaking  hands  with  one  another,  and  lighting 
fresh  cigars  as  they  passed  out  of  the  club  into 
the  night  air. 

"The  only  thing  that  I  don't  understand," 

said  Mr.  Newberry  to  Dr.  Boomer  as  they 

went  out  from  the  club  arm  in  arm  (for  they 

might  now  walk  in  that  fashion  with  the  same 

267 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

propriety  as  two  of  the  principals  in  a  distillery 
merger),  "the  only  thing  that  I  don't  under- 
stand is  why  the  Reverend  Mr.  Dumfarthing 
should  be  willing  to  consent  to  the  amalga- 
mation." 

"Do  you  really  not  know?"  said  Dr.  Boomer. 

"No." 

"You  have  heard  nothing?" 

"Not  a  word,"  said  Mr.  Newberry. 

"Ah,"  rejoined  the  president,  "I  see  that  our 
men  have  kept  it  very  quiet, — naturally  so,  in 
view  of  the  circumstances.  The  truth  is  that 
the  Reverend  Mr.  Dumfarthing  is  leaving  us." 

"Leaving  St.  Osoph's  I"  exclaimed  Mr.  New- 
berry in  utter  astonishment. 

"To  our  great  regret.  He  has  had  a  call, — 
a  most  inviting  field  of  work,  he  says,  a  splen- 
did opportunity.  They  offered  him  ten  thou- 
sand one  hundred;  we  were  only  giving  him 
ten  thousand  here,  though  of  course  that  fea- 
ture of  the  situation  would  not  weigh  at  all 
with  a  man  like  Dumfarthing." 

"Oh  no,  of  course  not,"  said  Mr.  New- 
berry. 

"As  soon  as  we  heard  of  the  call  we  offered 
him  ten  thousand  three  hundred, — not  that  that 
would  make  any  difference  to  a  man  of  his 
character.  Indeed  Dumfarthing  was  still  wait- 
ing and  looking  for  guidance  when  they  offered 
him  eleven  thousand.     We  couldn't  meet  it. 

268 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

It  was  beyond  us,  though  we  had  the  consola- 
tion of  knowing  that  with  such  a  man  as  Dum- 
farthing  the  money  made  no  difference." 

"And  he  has  accepted  the  call?" 

"Yes.  He  accepted  it  to-day.  He  sent  word 
to  Mr.  Dick  Overend,  our  chairman,  that 
he  would  remain  in  his  manse,  looking  for 
light,  until  two  thirty,  after  which,  if  we  had 
not  communicated  with  him.  by  that  hour,  he 
would  cease  to  look  for  it." 

"Dear  me,"  said  Mr.  Newberry,  deep  in 
reflection,  "so  that  when  your  trustees  came 
to  the  meeting " 

"Exactly,"  said  Dr.  Boomer, — and  some- 
thing like  a  smile  passed  across  his  features  for 
a  moment, — "Dr.  Dumfarthing  had  already 
sent  away  his  telegram  of  acceptance." 

"Why,  then,"  said  Mr.  Newberry,  "at  the 
time  of  our  discussion  to-night,  you  were  in  the 
position  of  having  no  minister." 

"Not  at  all.  We  had  already  appointed  a 
successor." 

"A  successor?" 

"Certainly.  It  will  be  in  to-morrow  morn- 
ing's papers.  The  fact  is  that  we  decided  to 
ask  Dr.  McTeague  to  resume  his  charge. 

"Dr.  McTeague!"  repeated  Mr.  Newberry 
in  amazement.  "But  surely  his  mind  is  under- 
stood to  be " 

"Oh,  not  at  all,"  interrupted  Dr.  Boomer. 
a69 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

"His  mind  appears,  if  anything,  to  be  clearer 
and  stronger  than  ever.  Dr.  Slyder  tells  us 
that  paralysis  of  the  brain  very  frequently  has 
this  effect;  it  soothes  the  brain, — clears  it,  as 
it  were,  so  that  very  often  intellectual  prob- 
lems which  occasioned  the  greatest  perplexity 
before  present  no  difficulty  whatever  after- 
ward. Dr.  McTeague,  I  beheve,  finds  no 
trouble  now  in  reconciling  St.  Paul's  dialectic 
with  Hegel  as  he  used  to.  He  says,  that  so 
far  as  he  can  see  they  both  mean  the  same 
thing." 

"Well,  well,"  said  Mr.  Newberry,  "and  will 
Dr.  McTeague  also  resume  his  philosophical 
lectures  at  the  university?" 

"We  think  it  wiser  not,"  said  the  president. 
"While  we  feel  that  Dr.  McTeague's  mind 
is  in  admirable  condition  for  clerical  work  we 
fear  that  professorial  duties  might  strain  it. 
In  order  to  get  the  full  value  of  his  remark- 
able intelligence,  we  propose  to  elect  him  to 
the  governing  body  of  the  university.  There 
his  brain  will  be  safe  from  any  shock.  As  a 
professor  there  would  always  be  the  fear  that 
one  of  his  students  might  raise  a  question  in 
his  class.  This  of  course  is  not  a  difficulty  that 
arises  in  the  pulpit  or  among  the  governors  of 
the  university." 

"Of  course  not,"  said  Mr.  Newberry. 


270 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

Thus  was  constituted  the  famous  union  or 
merger  of  the  churches  of  St.  Asaph  and  St. 
Osoph,  viewed  by  many  of  those  who  made  it 
as  the  beginning  of  a  new  era  in  the  history 
of  the  modern  church. 

There  is  no  doubt  that  it  has  been  in  every 
way  an  eminent  success. 

Rivalry,  competition  and  controversies  over 
points  of  dogma  have  become  unknown  on  Plu- 
toria  Avenue.  The  parishioners  of  the  two 
churches  may  now  attend  either  of  them  just  as 
they  like.  As  the  trustees  are  fond  of  explaining 
it  doesn't  make  the  slightest  difference.  The  en- 
tire receipts  of  the  churches  being  now  pooled 
are  divided  without  reference  to  individual  at- 
tendance. At  each  half  year  there  is  issued  a 
printed  statement  which  is  addressed  to  the 
shareholders  of  the  United  Churches  Limited 
and  is  hardly  to  be  distinguished  in  style  or 
material  from  the  annual  and  semi-annual  re- 
ports of  the  Tin  Pot  Amalgamation  and  the 
United  Hardware  and  other  quasi-religious 
bodies  of  the  sort.  "Your  directors,"  the  last 
of  these  documents  states,  "are  happy  to  in- 
form you  that  in  spite  of  the  prevailing  indus- 
trial depression  the  gross  receipts  of  the  cor- 
poration have  shown  such  an  increase  as  to 
justify  the  distribution  of  a  stock  dividend  of 
special  Offertory  Stock  Cumulative,  which  will 
be  offered  at  par  to  all  holders  of  common  or 
271 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

preferred  shares.  You  will  also  be  gratified 
to  learn  that  the  directors  have  voted  unani- 
mously in  favour  of  a  special  presentation  to 
the  Rev.  Uttermust  Dumfarthing  on  the  occa- 
sion of  his  approaching  marriage.  It  was 
earnestly  debated  whether  this  gift  should  take 
the  form,  as  at  first  suggested,  of  a  cash  pre- 
sentation, or,  as  afterwards  suggested,  of  a 
written  testimonial  in  the  form  of  an  address. 
The  latter  course  was  finally  adopted  as  being 
more  fitting  to  the  circumstances  and  the  ad- 
dress has  accordingly  been  prepared,  setting 
forth  to  the  Rev.  Dr.  Dumfarthing,  in  old 
English  lettering  and  wording,  the  opinion 
which  is  held  of  him  by  his  former  parish- 
ioners." 

The  "approaching  marriage"  referred  of 
course  to  Dr.  Dumfarthing's  betrothal  to 
Juliana  Furlong.  It  was  not  known  that  he 
had  ever  exactly  proposed  to  her.  But  it  was 
understood  that  before  giving  up  his  charge 
he  drew  her  attention,  in  very  severe  terms, 
to  the  fact  that,  as  his  daughter  was  now  leav- 
ing him,  he  must  either  have  someone  else  to 
look  after  his  manse  or  else  be  compelled  to 
incur  the  expense  of  a  paid  housekeeper.  This 
latter  alternative,  he  said,  was  not  one  that  he 
cared  to  contemplate.  He  also  reminded  her 
that  she  was  now  at  a  time  of  life  when  she 
could  hardly  expect  to  pick  and  choose  and 

373 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

that  her  spiritual  condition  was  one  of  at  least 
great  uncertainty.  These  combined  statements 
are  held,  under  the  law  of  Scotland  at  any  rate, 
to  be  equivalent  to  an  offer  of  marriage. 

Catherine  Dumfarthing  did  not  join  her 
father  in  his  new  manse.  She  first  remained 
behind  him,  as  the  guest  of  Philippa  Overend 
for  a  few  weeks  while  she  was  occupied  in 
packing  up  her  things.  After  that  she  stayed 
for  another  two  or  three  weeks  to  unpack  them. 
This  had  been  rendered  necessary  by  a  con- 
versation held  with  the  Reverend  Edward 
Fareforth  Furlong,  in  a  shaded  corner  of  the 
Overends'  garden.  After  which,  in  due  course 
of  time,  Catherine  and  Edward  were  married, 
the  ceremony  being  performed  by  the  Reverend 
Dr.  McTeague,  whose  eyes  filled  with  philo- 
sophical tears  as  he  gave  them  his  blessing. 

So  the  two  churches  of  St.  Asaph  and  St. 
Osoph  stand  side  by  side  united  and  at  peace. 
Their  bells  call  softly  back  and  forward  to 
one  another  on  Sunday  mornings  and  such  is 
the  harmony  between  them  that  even  the  epis- 
copal rooks  in  the  elm  trees  of  St.  Asaph's  and 
the  presbyterian  crows  in  the  spruce  trees  of 
St.  Osoph's  are  known  to  exchange  perches  on 
alternate  Sundays. 


^n 


Chapter  VIII.— The  Great  Fight  for  Clean 
Government 


AS  to  the  government  of  this  city,"  said 
Mr.    Newberry,    leaning  back   in   a 
leather  arm-chair  at  the  Mausoleum 
Club  and  lighting  a  second  cigar,  "it's 
rotten,  that's  all." 

"Absolutely  rotten,"  assented  Mr.  Dick 
Overend,  ringing  the  bell  for  a  second  whiskey 
and  soda. 

"Corrupt,"  said  Mr.  Newberry,  between  two 
puffs  of  his  cigar. 

"Full  of  graft,"  said  Mr.  Overend,  flicking 
his  ashes  into  the  grate. 

"Crooked  aldermen,"   said  Mr.  Newberry. 

"A  bum  city  solicitor,"  said  Mr.  Overend, 
"and  an  infernal  grafter  for  treasurer." 

"Yes,"  assented  Mr.  Newberry,  and  then, 
leaning  forward  in  his  chair  and  looking  care- 
fully about  the  corridors  of  the  club,  he  spoke 
behind  his  hand  and  said,  "And  the  mayor's 
the  biggest  grafter  of  the  lot.  And  what's 
more,"  he  added,  sinking  his  voice  to  a  whisper, 
"the  time  has  come  to  speak  out  about  it  fear- 
lessly." 

Mr.  Overend  nodded.  "It's  a  tyranny,"  he 
said. 

374 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

"Worse  than  Russia,"  rejoined  Mr.  New- 
berry. 

They  had  been  sitting  in  a  quiet  corner  of 
the  club — it  was  on  a  Sunday  evening — and 
had  fallen  into  talking,  first  of  all,  of  the  pres- 
ent rottenness  of  the  federal  politics  of  the 
United  States, — not  argumentatively  or  with 
any  heat,  but  with  the  reflective  sadness  that 
steals  over  an  elderly  man  when  he  sits  in  the 
leather  arm-chair  of  a  comfortable  club  smoking 
a  good  cigar  and  musing  on  the  decadence  of 
the  present  day.  The  rottenness  of  the  federal 
government  didn't  anger  them.  It  merely 
grieved  them. 

They  could  remember, — ^both  of  them, — how 
different  everything  was  when  they  were  young 
men  just  entering  on  life.  When  Mr.  New- 
berry and  Mr.  Dick  Overend  were  young,  men 
went  into  congress  from  pure  patriotism;  there 
was  no  such  thing  as  graft  or  crookedness,  as 
they  both  admitted,  in  those  days;  and  as  for 
the  United  States  Senate — here  their  voices 
were  almost  hushed  in  awe — why,  when  they 
were  young,  the  United  States  Senate, 

But  no,  neither  of  them  could  find  a  phrase 
big  enough  for  their  meaning. 

They  merely  repeated  "as  for  the  United 
States  Senate" — and  then  shook  their  heads  and 
took  long  drinks  of  whiskey  and  soda. 
275 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

Then,  naturally,  speaking  of  the  rottenness 
of  the  federal  government  had  led  them  to 
talk  of  the  rottenness  of  the  state  leg^islature. 
How  different  from  the  state  legislatives  that 
they  remembered  as  young  men!  Not  merely 
different  In  the  matter  of  graft,  but  different, 
so  Mr.  Newberry  said,  in  the  calibre  of  the 
men.  He  recalled  how  he  had  been  taken  as 
a  boy  of  twelve  by  his  father  to  hear  a  debate. 
He  would  never  forget  it.  Giants!  he  said, 
that  was  what  they  were.  In  fact,  the  thing  was 
more  like  a  Witenagemot  than  a  legislature. 
He  said  he  distinctly  recalled  a  man,  whose 
name  he  didn't  recollect,  speaking  on  a  ques- 
tion, he  didn't  just  remember  what,  either  for 
or  against  he  couldn't  just  recall  which;  it 
thrilled  him.  He  would  never  forget  it.  It 
stayed  in  his  memory  as  if  it  were  yesterday. 

But  as  for  the  present  legislature, — here  Mr. 
Dick  Overend  sadly  nodded  assent  in  advance 
to  what  he  knew  was  coming— as  for  the  pres- 
ent legislature — well, — Mr.  Newberry  had  had, 
he  said,  occasion  to  visit  the  state  capital  a 
week  before  in  connection  with  a  railway  bill 
that  he  was  trying  to, — ^that  is,  that  he  was 
anxious  to, — in  short  in  connection  with  a  rail- 
way bill,  and  when  he  looked  about  him  at  the 
men  in  the  legislature, — ^positively  he  felt 
ashamed;  he  could  put  it  no  other  way  than 

that, — ashamed. 

276 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

After  which,  from  speaking  of  the  crooked- 
ness of  the  state  government  Mr.  Newberry 
and  Mr.  Dick  Overend  were  led  to  talk  of  the 
crookedness  of  the  city  government  I  And  they 
both  agreed,  as  above,  that  things  were  worse 
than  in  Russia.  What  secretly  irritated  them 
both  most  was  that  they  had  lived  and  done 
business  under  this  infernal  corruption  for 
thirty  or  forty  years  and  hadn't  noticed  it.  They 
had  been  too  busy. 

The  fact  was  that  their  conversation  re- 
flected not  so  much  their  own  original  ideas 
as  a  general  wave  of  feeling  that  was  passing 
over  the  whole  community. 

There  had  come  a  moment, — quite  suddenly 
it  seemed, — when  it  occurred  to  everybody  at 
the  same  time  that  the  whole  government  of 
the  city  was  rotten.  The  word  is  a  strong  one. 
But  it  is  the  one  that  was  used.  Look  at  the 
aldermen,  they  said, — rotten !  Look  at  the  city 
solicitor,  rotten!  And  as  for  the  mayor  him- 
self,— phew  1 

The  thing  came  like  a  wave.  Everybody  felt 
it  at  once.  People  wondered  how  any  sane, 
intelligent  community  could  tolerate  the  pres- 
ence of  a  set  of  corrupt  scoundrels  like  the 
twenty  aldermen  of  the  city.  Their  names,  it 
was  said,  were  simply  a  byword  throughout 
the  United  States  for  rank  criminal  corruption. 
This  was  said  so  widely  that  everybody  started 
277 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

hunting  through  the  daily  papers  to  try  to  find 
out  who  in  blazes  were  aldermen,  anyhow. 
Twenty  names  are  hard  to  remember,  and  as  a 
matter  of  fact,  at  the  moment  when  this  wave 
of  feeling  struck  the  city,  nobody  knew  or  cared 
who  were  aldermen,  anyway. 

To  tell  the  truth,  the  aldermen  had  been 
much  the  same  persons  for  about  fifteen  or 
twenty  years.  Some  were  in  the  produce  busi- 
ness, others  were  butchers,  two  were  grocers, 
and  all  of  them  wore  blue  checkered  waist- 
coats and  red  ties  and  got  up  at  seven  in  the 
morning  to  attend  the  vegetable  and  other 
markets.  Nobody  had  ever  really  thought 
about  them, — ^that  is  to  say,  nobody  on  Plu- 
toria  Avenue.  Sometimes  one  saw  a  picture 
in  the  paper  and  wondered  for  a  moment  who 
the  person  was;  but  on  looking  more  closely 
and  noticing  what  was  written  under  it,  one 
said,  "Oh,  I  see,  an  alderman,"  and  turned  to 
something  else. 

"Whose  funeral  is  that?"  a  man  would  some- 
times ask  on  Plutoria  Avenue.  "Oh,  just  one 
of  the  city  aldermen,"  a  passer-by  would  an- 
swer hurriedly.  "Oh,  I  see,  I  beg  your  pardon, 
I  thought  it  might  be  somebody  important." 

At  which  both  laughed. 

It  was  not  just  clear  how  and  where  this 
movement  of  indignation  had  started.     People 

278 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

said  that  it  was  part  of  a  new  wave  of  public 
morality  that  was  sweeping  over  the  entire 
United  States.  Certainly  it  was  being  remarked 
in  almost  every  section  of  the  country.  Chicago 
newspapers  were  attributing  its  origin  to  the 
new  vigour  and  the  fresh  ideals  of  the  middle 
west.  In  Boston  it  was  said  to  be  due  to  a 
revival  of  the  grand  old  New  England  spirit. 
In  Philadelphia  they  called  it  the  spirit  of 
William  Penn.  In  the  south  it  was  said  to  be 
the  reassertion  of  southern  chivalry  making 
itself  felt  against  the  greed  and  selfishness  of 
the  north,  while  in  the  north  they  recognised 
it  at  once  as  a  protest  against  the  sluggishness 
and  ignorance  of  the  south.  In  the  west  they 
spoke  of  it  as  a  revolt  against  the  spirit  of 
the  east  and  in  the  east  they  called  it  a  reaction 
against  the  lawlessness  of  the  west.  But  every- 
where they  hailed  it  as  a  new  sign  of  the  glo- 
rious unity  of  the  country. 

If  therefore  Mr.  Newberry  and  Mr.  Over- 
end  were  found  to  be  discussing  the  corrupt 
state  of  their  city  they  only  shared  in  the  na- 
tional sentiments  of  the  moment.  In  fact  in 
the  same  city  hundreds  of  other  citizens,  as 
disinterested  as  themselves,  were  waking  up 
to  the  realisation  of  what  was  going  on.  As 
soon  as  people  began  to  look  into  the  condi- 
tion of  things  in  the  city  they  were  horrified 
at  what  they  found.  It  was  discovered,  for 
279 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

example,  that  Alderman  Schwefeldampf  was 
an  undertaker!  Think  of  it  I  In  a  city  with 
a  hundred  and  fifty  deaths  a  week,  and  some- 
times even  better,  an  undertaker  sat  on  the 
council  I  A  city  that  was  about  to  expropriate 
land  and  to  spend  four  hundred  thousand  dol- 
lars for  a'  new  cemetery,  had  an  undertaker 
on  the  expropriation  committee  itself!  And 
worse  than  that!  Alderman  Undercutt  was  a 
butcher!  In  a  city  that  consumed  a  thousand 
tons  of  meat  every  week!  And  Alderman 
O'Hooligan — it  leaked  out — was  an  Irishman ! 
Imagine  it!  An  Irishman  sitting  on  the  police 
committee  of  the  council  in  a  city  where  thirty- 
eight  and  a  half  out  of  every  hundred  police- 
men were  Irish,  either  by  birth  or  parentage ! 
The  thing  was  monstrous. 

So  when  Mr.  Newberry  said  "It's  worse  than 
Russia !"  he  meant  it,  every  word. 

Now  just  as  Mr.  Newberry  and  Mr.  Dick 
Overend  were  finishing  their  discussion,  the 
huge  bulky  form  of  Mayor  McGrath  came 
ponderously  past  them  as  they  sat.  He  looked 
at  them  sideways  out  of  his  eyes, — he  had  eyes 
like  plums  in  a  mottled  face, — and,  being  a 
born  politician,  he  knew  by  the  very  look  of 
them  that  they  were  talking  of  something  that 
they  had  no  business  to  be  talking  about.  But, 
— ^being  a  politician, — he  merely  said,  "Good 

280 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

evening,  gentlemen,"  without  a  sign  of  disturb- 
ance. 

"Good  evening,  Mr.  Mayor,"  said  Mr. 
Newberry,  rubbing  his  hands  feebly  together 
and  speaking  in  an  ingratiating  tone.  There 
is  no  more  pitiable  spectacle  than  an  honest 
man  caught  in  the  act  of  speaking  boldly  and 
fearlessly  of  the  evil-doer. 

"Good  evening,  Mr.  Mayor,"  echoed  Mr. 
Dick  Overend,  also  nibbing  his  hands;  "warm 
evening,  is  it  not?" 

The  mayor  gave  no  other  answer  than  that 
deep  guttural  grunt  which  is  technically  known 
in  municipal  interviews  as  refusing  to  commit 
oneself. 

"Did  he  hear?"  whispered  Mr.  Newberry 
as  the  mayor  passed  out  of  the  club. 

"I  don't  care  if  he  did,"  whispered  Mr.  Dick 
Overend. 

Half  an  hour  later  Mayor  McGrath  entered 
the  premises  of  the  Thomas  Jefferson  Club, 
which  were  situated  in  the  rear  end  of  a  saloon 
and  pool  room  far  down  in  the  town. 

"Boys,"  he  said  to  Alderman  O'Hooligan 
and  Alderman  Gorfinkel,  who  were  playing 
freeze-out  poker  in  a  corner  behind  the  pool 
tables,  "you  want  to  let  the  boys  know  to  keep 
pretty  dark  and  go  easy.  There's  a  lot  of  talk 
I  don't  like  about  the  elections  going  round  the 
281 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

town.  Let  the  boys  know  that  just  for  a  while 
the  darker  they  keep  the  better." 

Whereupon  the  word  was  passed  from  the 
Thomas  Jefferson  Club  to  the  George  Wash- 
ington Club  and  thence  to  the  Eureka  Club 
(coloured),  and  to  the  Kossuth  Club  (Hun- 
garian), and  to  various  other  centres  of  civic 
patriotism  in  the  lower  parts  of  the  city.  And 
forthwith  such  a  darkness  began  to  spread  over 
them  that  not  even  honest  Diogenes  with  his 
lantern  could  have  penetrated  their  doings. 

"If  them  stiffs  wants  to  make  trouble,"  said 
the  president  of  the  George  Washington  Club 
to  Mayor  McGrath  a  day  or  two  later,  "they 
won't  never  know  what  they've  bumped  up 
against." 

"Well,"  said  the  heavy  mayor,  speaking 
slowly  and  cautiously  and  eyeing  his  henchman 
with  quiet  scrutiny,  "you  want  to  go  pretty  easy 
now,  I  tell  you." 

The  look  which  the  mayor  directed  at  his 
satellite  was  much  the  same  glance  that  Mor- 
gan the  buccaneer  might  have  given  to  one 
of  his  lieutenants  before  throwing  him  over- 
board. 

•  •  •  •  • 

Meantime  the  wave  of  civic  enthusiasm  as 
reflected  in  the  conversations  of  Plutoria  Ave- 
nue grew  stronger  with  every  day. 

"The  thing  is  a  scandal,"  said  Mr.  Lucullus 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

Fyshe.  "Why,  these  fellows  down  at  the  city 
hall  are  simply  a  pack  of  rogues.  I  had  oc- 
casion to  do  some  business  there  the  other  day 
(it  was  connected  with  the  assessment  of  our 
soda  factories)  and  do  you  know,  I  actually 
found  that  these  fellows  take  money/" 

"I  say  I"  said  Mr.  Peter  Spillikins,  to  whom 
he  spoke,  "I  say  I    You  don't  sayl" 

"It's  a  faot,"  repeated  Mr.  Fyshe.  "They 
take  money.  I  took  the  assistant  treasurer  aside 
and  I  said,  'I  want  such  and  such  done,'  and  I 
slipped  a  fifty  dollar  bill  into  his  hand.  And 
the  fellow  took  it,  took  It  like  a  shot." 

"He  took  itl"  gasped  Mr.  Spillikins. 

"He  did,"  said  Mr.  Fyshe.  "There  ought 
to  be  a  criminal  law  for  that  sort  of  thing." 

"I  sayl"  exclaimed  Mr.  Spillikins,  "they 
ought  to  go  to  jail  for  a  thing  like  that." 

"And  the  Infernal  insolence  of  them,"  Mr. 
Fyshe  continued.  "I  went  down  the  next  day 
to  see  the  deputy  assistant  (about  a  thing  con- 
nected with  the  same  master) ,  told  him  what  I 
wanted  and  passed  a  fifty  dollar  bill  across 
the  counter  and  the  fellow  fairly  threw  It  back 
at  me,  In  a  perfect  rage.    He  refused  It!" 

"Refused  it,"  gasped  Mr.  Spillikins,  "I  say!" 

Conversations  such  as  this  filled  up  the  leisure 
and  divided  the  business  time  of  all  the  best 
people  In  the  city. 

283 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

In  the  general  gloomy  outlook,  however,  one 
bright  spot  was  observable.  The  "wave"  had 
evidently  come  just  at  the  opportune  moment. 
For  not  only  were  civic  elections  pending  but 
just  at  this  juncture  four  or  five  questions  of 
supreme  importance  would  have  to  be  settled 
by  the  incoming  council.  There  was,  for  in- 
stance, the  question  of  the  expropriation  of  the 
Traction  Company  (a  matter  involving  many 
millions)  ;  there  was  the  decision  as  to  the  re- 
newal of  the  franchise  of  the  Citizens'  Light 
Company, — a  vital  question;  there  was  also 
the  four  hundred  thousand  dollar  purchase  of 
land  for  the  new  addition  to  the  cemetery,  a 
matter  that  must  be  settled.  And  It  was  felt, 
especially  on  Plutoria  Avenue,  to  be  a  splendid 
thing  that  the  city  was  waking  up.  In  the  moral 
sense,  at  the  very  time  when  these  things  were 
under  discussion.  All  the  shareholders  of  the 
Traction  Company  and  the  Citizens'  Light, — 
and  they  included  the  very  best,  the  most  high- 
minded,  people  in  the  city, — felt  that  what  was 
needed  now  was  a  great  moral  effort,  to  enable 
them  to  lift  the  city  up  and  carry  It  with  them, 
or,  If  not  all  of  it,  at  any  rate  as  much  of  it 
as  they  could. 

•  •  •  •  • 

"It's  a  splendid  movement  I"  said  Mr.  Fyshe 
(he  was  a  leading  shareholder  and  director  of 
the  Citizens'  Light) ,  "what  a  splendid  thing  to 

a&4 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

think  that  we  shan't  have  to  deal  for  our  new 
franchise  with  a  set  of  corrupt  rapscallions  like 
these  present  aldermen.  Do  you  know,  Fur- 
long, that  when  we  approached  them  first  with 
a  proposition  for  a  renewal  for  a  hundred  and 
fifty  years  they  held  us  up!  Said  it  was  too 
long!  Imagine  that!  A  hundred  and  fifty 
years  (only  a  century  and  a  half)  too  long  for 
the  franchise!  They  expect  us  to  instal  all 
our  poles,  string  our  wires,  set  up  our  trans- 
formers in  their  streets  and  then  perhaps  at 
the  end  of  a  hundred  years  find  ourselves  com- 
pelled to  sell  out  at  a  beggarly  valuation.  Of 
course  we  knew  what  they  wanted.  They  meant 
us  to  hand  them  over  fifty  dollars  each  to  stuff 
into  their  rascally  pockets." 

"Outrageous !"  said  Mr.  Furlong. 

"And  the  same  thing  with  the  cemetery  land 
deal,"  went  on  Mr.  Lucullus  Fyshe.  "Do  you 
realise  that,  if  the  movement  hadn't  come  along 
and  checked  them,  those  scoundrels  would  have 
given  that  rogue  Schwefeldampf  four  hundred 
thousand  dollars  for  his  fifty  acres  I  Just  think 
of  it!" 

"I  don't  know,"  said  Mr.  Furlong  with  a 
thoughtful  look  upon  his  face,  "that  four  hun- 
dred thousand  dollars  is  an  excessive  price,  in 
and  of  itself,  for  that  amount  of  land." 

"Certainly  not,"  said  Mr.  Fyshe,  very  quietly 
and  decidedly,  looking  at  Mr.  Furlong  in  a 
28s 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

searching  way  as  he  spoke.  "It  is  not  a  high 
price.  It  seems  to  me,  speaking  purely  as  an 
outsider,  a  very  fair,  reasonable  price  for  fifty 
acres  of  suburban  land,  if  it  were  the  riffht 
land.  If,  for  example,  it  were  a  case  of  making 
an  offer  for  that  very  fine  stretch  of  land,  about 
twenty  acres,  is  it  not,  which  I  believe  your 
Corporation  owns  on  the  other  side  of  the 
cemetery,  I  should  say  four  hundred  thousand 
is  a  most  modest  price." 

Mr.  Furlong  nodded  his  head  reflectively. 

*'You  had  thought,  had  you  not,  of  offer- 
ing it  to  the  city?"  said  Mr.  Fyshe. 

"We  did,"  said  Mr.  Furlong,  "at  a  more 
or  less  nominal  sum,;— four  hundred  thousand 
or  whatever  it  might  me.  We  felt  that  for  such 
a  purpose,  almost  sacred  as  it  were,  one  would 
want  as  little  bargaining  as  possible." 

"Oh,  none  at  all,"  assented  Mr.  Fyshe. 

"Our  feeling  was,"  went  on  Mr.  Furlong, 
"that  if  the  city  wanted  our  land  for  the  ceme- 
tery extension,  it  might  have  it  at  its  own  figure, 
— four  hundred  thousand,  half  a  million,  in 
fact  at  absolutely  any  price,  from  four  hundred 
thousand  up,  that  they  cared  to  put  on  it.  We 
didn't  regard  it  as  a  commercial  transaction  at 
all.  Our  reward  lay  merely  in  the  fact  of  sell- 
ing it  to  them." 

"Exactly,"  said  Mr.  Fyshe,  "and  of  course 
your  land  was  more  desirable  from  every  point 

286 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

of  view.  Schwefeldampf's  ground  is  encum- 
bered with  a  growth  of  q^press  and  evergreens 
and  weeping  willows  which  make  it  quite  un- 
suitable for  an  up-to-date  cemetery;  whereas 
yours,  as  I  remember  it,  is  bright  and  open, — 
a  loose  sandy  soil  with  no  trees  and  very  little 
grass  to  overcome." 

"Yes,"  said  Mr.  Furlong.  "We  thought  too, 
that  our  ground,  having  the  tanneries  and  the 
chemical  factory  along  the  further  side  of  it, 
was  an  ideal  place  for, "  he  paused,  seek- 
ing a  mode  of  expressing  his  thought. 

"For  the  dead,"  said  Mr.  Fyshe,  with  be- 
coming reverence. 

And  after  this  conversation  Mr.  Fyshe  and 
Mr.  Furlong  senior  understood  one  another 
absolutely  in  regard  to  the  new  movement. 

It  was  astonishing  in  fact  how  rapidly  the 
light  spread. 

"Is  Rasselyer-Brown  with  us?"  asked  some 
one  of  Mr.  Fyshe  a  few  days  later. 

"Heart  and  soul,"  answered  Mr.  Fyshe. 
"He's  very  bitter  over  the  way  these  rascals 
have  been  plundering  the  city  on  its  coal  sup- 
ply. He  says  that  the  city  has  been  buying  coal 
wholesale  at  the  pit  mouth  at  three  fifty, — 
utterly  worthless  stuff,  he  tells  me.  He  has 
heard  it  said  that  every  one  of  these  scoundrels 
has  been  paid  from  twenty-five  to  fifty  dollars 
a  winter  to  connive  at  it." 
287 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

"Dear  me,"  said  the  listener. 

"Abominable,  is  it  not?"  said  Mr.  Fyshe. 
"But  as  I  said  to  Rasselyer-Brown,  what  can 
one  do  if  the  citizens  themselves  take  no  inter- 
est in  these  things.  'Take  your  own  case,'  I 
said  to  him,  'how  is  it  that  you,  a  coal  man,  are 
not  helping  the  city  in  this  matter?  Why  don't 
you  supply  the  city?'  He  shook  his  head,  'I 
wouldn't  do  it  at  three  fifty,'  he  said.  'No,'  I 
answered,  'but  will  you  at  five?'  He  looked 
at  me  for  a  moment  and  then  he  said,  'Fyshe, 
I'll  do  it;  at  five,  or  at  anything  over  that  they 
like  to  name.  If  we  get  a  new  council  in  they 
may  name  their  own  figure.'  'Good,'  I  said. 
*I  hope  all  the  other  business  men  will  be  ani- 
mated with  the  same  spirit.'  " 

Thus  it  was  that  the  light  broke  and  spread 
and  illuminated  in  all  directions.  People  began 
to  realise  the  needs  of  the  city  as  they  never 
had  before.  Mr.  Boulder,  who  owned,  among 
other  things,  a  stone  quarry  and  an  asphalt 
company,  felt  that  the  paving  of  the  streets 
was  a  disgrace.  Mr.  Skinyer,  of  Skinyer  and 
Beatem,  shook  his  head  and  said  that  the  whole 
legal  department  of  the  city  needed  reorganisa- 
tion; it  needed,  he  said,  new  blood.  But  he 
added  always  in  a  despairing  tone,  how  could 
one  expect  to  run  a  department  with  the  head 
of  it  drawing  only  six  thousand  dollars;  the 
a88 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

thing  was  impossible.  If,  he  argued,  they  could 
superannuate  the  present  chief  solicitor  and  get 
a  man,  a  good  man  (Mr.  Skinyer  laid  em- 
phasis on  this)  at,  say,  fifteen  thousand,  there 
might  be  some  hope. 

"Of  course,"  said  Mr.  Slcinyer  to  Mr.  New- 
berry in  discussing  the  topic,  "one  would  need 
to  give  him  a  proper  staff  of  assistants  so  as 
to  take  off  his  hands  all  the  routine  work, — the 
mere  appearance  in  court,  the  preparation  of 
briefs,  the  office  consultation,  the  tax  revision 
and  the  purely  legal  work.  In  that  case  he 
would  have  his  hands  free  to  devote  himself  en- 
tirely to  those  things,  which, — in  fact  to  turn 
his  attention  in  whatever  direction  he  might 
feel  it  was  advisable  to  turn  it. 

Within  a  week  or  two  the  public  movement 
had  found  definite  expression  and  embodied 
itself  in  the  Clean  Government  Association. 
This  was  organised  by  a  group  of  leading  and 
disinterested  citizens  who  held  their  first  meet- 
ing in  the  largest  upstairs  room  of  the  Mauso- 
leum Club.  Mr.  Lucullus  Fyshe,  Mr.  Boulder, 
and  others  keenly  interested  in  obtaining  sim- 
ply justice  for  the  stockholders  of  the  Traction 
and  the  Citizens'  Light  were  prominent  from 
the  start.  Mr.  Rasselyer-Brown,  Mr.  Furlong 
senior  and  others  were  there,  not  from  special 
interest  in  the  light  or  traction  questions,  but. 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

as  they  said  themselves,  from  pure  civic  spirit. 
Dr.  Boomer  was  there  to  represent  the  univer- 
sity with  three  of  his  most  presentable  pro- 
fessors, cultivated  men  who  were  able  to  sit 
in  a  first  class  club  and  drink  whiskey  and  soda 
and  talk  as  well  as  any  business  man  present. 
Mr.  Skinyer,  Mr.  Beatem  and  others  repre- 
sented the  bar.  Dr.  McTeague,  blinking  in  the 
blue  tobacco  smoke,  was  there  to  stand  for  the 
church.  There  were  all-round  enthusiasts  as 
well,  such  as  Mr.  Newberry  and  the  Overend 
brothers  and  Mr.  Peter  Spillikins. 

"Isn't  it  fine,"  whispered  Mr.  Spillikins  to 
Mr.  Newberry,  "to  see  a  set  of  men  like  these 
all  going  into  a  thing  like  this,  not  thinking 
of  their  own  interests  a  bit?" 

Mr.  Fyshe,  as  chairman,  addressed  the  meet- 
ing. He  told  them  they  were  there  to  initiate 
a  great  free  voluntary  movement  of  the  people. 
It  had  been  thought  wise,  he  said,  to  hold  it 
with  closed  doors  and  to  keep  it  out  of  the 
newspapers.  This  would  guarantee  the  league 
against  the  old  underhand  control  by  a  clique 
that  had  hitherto  disgraced  every  part  of  the 
administration  of  the  city.  He  wanted,  he  said, 
to  see  everything  done  henceforth  in  broad  day- 
light: and  for  this  purpose  he  had  summoned 
them  there  at  night  to  discuss  ways  and  means 
of  action.  After  they  were  once  fully  assured  of 
exactly  what  they  wanted  to  do  and  how  they 

290 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

meant  to  do  it,  the  league,  he  said,  would  in- 
vite the  fullest  and  freest  advice  from  all  classes 
in  the  city.  There  were  none,  he  said,  amid 
great  applause,  that  were  so  lowly  that  they 
would  not  be  invited, — once  the  platform  of  the 
league  was  settled, — to  advise  and  co-operate. 
All  might  help,  even  the  poorest.  Subscrip- 
tion lists  would  be  prepared  which  would  allow 
any  sum  at  all,  from  one  to  five  dollars,  to  be 
given  to  the  treasurer.  The  league  was  to  be 
democratic  or  nothing.  The  poorest  might  con- 
tribute as  little  as  one  dollar:  even  the  richest 
would  not  be  allowed  to  give  more  than  five. 
Moreover  he  gave  notice  that  he  intended  to 
propose  that  no  actual  official  of  the  league 
should  be  allowed  under  its  by-laws  to  give  any- 
thing. He  himself, — if  they  did  him  the  hon- 
our to  make  him  president  as  he  had  heard  it 
hinted  was  their  intention, — would  be  the  first 
to  bow  to  this  rule.  He  would  efface  himself. 
He  would  obliterate  himself,  content  in  the 
interests  of  all,  to  give  nothing.  He  was  able 
to  announce  similar  pledges  from  his  friends, 
Mr.  Boulder,  Mr.  Furlong,  Dr.  Boomer  and  a 
number  of  others. 

Quite  a  storm  of  applause  greeted  these  re- 
marks by  Mr.  Fyshe,  who  flushed  with  pride 
as  he  heard  it. 

"Now,  gentlemen,"  he  went  on,  "this  meet- 
ing is  open  for  discussion.     Remember  it  is 
291 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

quite  informal,  anyone  may  speak.  I  as  chair- 
man make  no  claim  to  control  or  monopolise 
the  discussion.    Let  everyone  understand " 

"Well  then,  Mr.  Chairman,"  began  Mr. 
Dick  Overend. 

"One  minute,  Mr.  Overend,"  said  Mr. 
Fyshe.  "I  want  everyone  to  understand  that  he 
may  speak  as " 

"May  I  say  then "  began  Mr.  New- 
berry. 

"Pardon  me,  Mr.  Newberry,"  said  Mr. 
Fyshe,  "I  was  wishing  first  to  explain  that 
not  only  may  all  participate  but  that  we  in- 
vite  " 

"In  that  case "  began  Mr.  Newberry. 

"Before  you  speak,"  interrupted  Mr.  Fyshe, 
"let  me  add  one  word.  We  must  make  our 
discussion  as  brief  and  to  the  point  as  pos- 
sible. I  have  a  great  number  of  things  which 
I  wish  to  say  to  the  meeting  and  it  might  be 
well  if  all  of  you  would  speak  as  briefly  and 
as  little  as  possible.  Has  anybody  anything 
to  say?" 

"Well,"  said  Mr.  Newberry,  "what  about 
organisation  and  officers?" 

"We  have  thought  of  it,"  said  Mr.  Fyshe. 
"We  were  anxious  above  all  things  to  avoid 
the  objectionable  and  corrupt  methods  of  a 
'slate'  and  a  prepared  list  of  officers  which 
have  disgraced  every  part  of  our  city  politics 

292 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

until  the  present  time.  Mr.  Boulder,  Mr.  Fur- 
long and  Mr.  Skinyer  and  myself  have  there- 
fore prepared  a  short  list  of  offices  and  officers 
which  we  wish  to  submit  to  your  fullest,  freest 
consideration.  It  runs  thus:  Hon.  President 
Mr.  L.  Fyshe,  Hon.  Vice-President  Mr.  A. 
Boulder,  Hon.  Secretary  Mr.  Furlong,  Hon. 
Treasurer  Mr.  O.  Skinyer,  et  cetera,  et  cetera, 
— I  needn't  read  it  all.  You'll  see  it  posted 
in  the  hall  later.  Is  that  carried?  Carried  I 
Very  good,"  said  Mr.  Fyshe. 

There  was  a  moment's  pause  while  Mr.  Fur- 
long and  Mr.  Skinyer  moved  into  seats  beside 
Mr.  Fyshe  and  while  Mr.  Furlong  drew  from 
his  pocket  and  arranged  the  bundle  of  min- 
utes of  the  meeting  which  he  had  brought 
with  him.  As  he  himself  said  he  was  too  neat 
and  methodical  a  writer  to  trust  to  jotting  them 
down  on  the  spot. 

"Don't  you  think,"  said  Mr.  Newberry,  "I 
speak  as  a  practical  man,  that  we  ought  to  do 
something  to  get  the  newspapers  with  us?" 

"Most  important,"  assented  several  mem- 
bers. 

"What  do  you  think.  Dr.  Boomer?"  asked 
Mr.  Fyshe  of  the  university  president,  "will  the 
newspapers  be  with  us?" 

Dr.  Boomer  shook  his  head  doubtfully.  "It's 
an  important  matter,"  he  said.  "There  is  no 
doubt  that  we  need,  more  than  anything,  the 
293 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

support  of  a  clean,  wholesome  unbiassed  press 
that  can't  be  bribed  and  is  not  subject  to  money- 
influence.  I  think  on  the  whole  our  best  plan 
would  be  to  buy  up  one  of  the  city  newspapers." 

"Might  it  not  be  better  simply  to  buy  up  the 
editorial  staff?"  said  Mr.  Dick  Overend. 

"We  might  do  that,"  admitted  Dr.  Boomer. 
"There  is  no  doubt  that  the  corruption  of  the 
press  is  one  of  the  worst  factors  that  we  have 
to  oppose.  But  whether  we  can  best  fight  it 
by  buying  the  paper  itself  or  buying  the  staff 
is  hard  to  say." 

"Suppose  we  leave  it  to  a  committee  with  full 
power  to  act,"  said  Mr.  Fyshe.  "Let  us  direct 
them  to  take  whatever  steps  may  in  their  opinion 
be  best  calculated  to  elevate  the  tone  of  the 
press,  the  treasurer  being  authorised  to  second 
them  in  every  way.  I  for  one  am  heartily  sick 
of  old  underhand  connection  between  city  poli- 
tics and  the  city  papers.  If  we  can  do  any- 
thing to  alter  and  elevate  it,  it  will  be  a  fine 
work,  gentlemen,  well  worth  whatever  it  costs 
us." 

Thus  after  an  hour  or  two  of  such  discussion 
the  Clean  Government  League  found  itself  or- 
ganised and  equipped  with  a  treasury  and  a 
programme  and  a  platform.  The  latter  was 
very  simple.  As  Mr.  Fyshe  and  Mr.  Boulder 
said  there  was  no  need  to  drag  in  specific  ques- 
tions or  try  to  define  the  action  to  be  taken  to- 

294 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

wards  this  or  that  particular  detail,  such  as  the 
hundred  and  fifty  year  franchise,  beforehand. 
The  platform  was  simply  expressed  as  Honesty, 
Purity,  Integrity.  This,  as  Mr.  Fyshe  said, 
made  a  straight,  flat,  clean  issue  between  the 
league  and  all  who  opposed  it. 

This  first  meeting  was  of  course  confidential. 
But  all  that  it  did  was  presently  done  over 
again,  with  wonderful  freshness  and  spontaneity 
at  a  large  public  meeting  open  to  all  citizens. 
There  was  a  splendid  impromptu  air  about 
everything.  For  instance  when  somebody  away 
back  in  the  hall  said,  "I  move  that  Mr.  Lucul- 
lus  Fyshe  be  president  of  the  league,"  Mr. 
Fyshe  lifted  his  hand  in  unavailing  protest  as 
if  this  were  the  newest  idea  he  had  ever  heard 
in  his  life. 

After  all  of  which  the  Clean  Government 
League  set  itself  to  fight  the  cohorts  of  dark- 
ness. It  was  not  just  known  where  these  were. 
But  it  was  understood  that  they  were  there  all 
right,  somewhere.  In  the  platform  speeches 
of  the  epoch  they  figured  as  working  under- 
ground, working  in  the  dark,  working  behind 
the  scenes,  and  so  forth.  But  the  strange  thing 
was  that  nobody  could  state  with  any  exacti- 
tude just  who  or  what  it  was  that  the  league 
was  fighting.  It  stood  for  "honesty,  purity, 
and  integrity."  That  was  all  you  could  say 
about  it. 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

Take  for  example  the  case  of  the  press.  At 
the  inception  of  the  league  it  had  been  sup- 
posed that  such  was  the  venality  and  corrup- 
tion of  the  city  newspapers  that  it  would  be 
necessary  to  buy  one  of  them.  But  the  word 
"clean  government"  had  been  no  sooner  uttered 
that  it  turned  out  that  every  one  of  the  papers 
in  the  city  was  in  favour  of  it :  in  fact  had  been 
working  for  it  for  years. 

They  vied  with  one  another  now  in  giving 
publicity  to  the  idea.  The  Pltitorian  Times 
printed  a  dotted  coupon  on  the  corner  of  its 
front  sheet  with  the  words,  "Are  you  in  favour 
of  Clean  Government?  If  so,  send  us  ten  cents 
with  this  coupon  and  your  name  and  address." 
The  Plutorian  Citizen  and  Home  Advocate 
went  even  further.  It  printed  a  coupon  which 
said,  "Are  you  out  for  a  clean  city?  If  so  send 
us  twenty-five  cents  to  this  office.  We  pledge 
ourselves  to  use  it." 

The  newspapers  did  more  than  this.  They 
printed  from  day  to  day  such  pictures  as  the 
portrait  of  Mr.  Fyshe  with  the  legend  below, 
"Mr.  Lucullus  Fyshe,  who  says  that  govern- 
ment ought  to  be  by  the  people,  from  the  peo- 
ple, for  the  people  and  to  the  people;"  and  the 
next  day  another  labelled,  "Mr.  P.  Spillikins, 
who  says  that  all  men  are  born  free  and  equal;" 
and  the  next  day  a  picture  with  the  words, 
"Tract  of  ground  of  ere  d  for  cemetery  by  Mr. 
296 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

Furlong,  showing  rear  of  tanneries,  with  head 
of  Mr.  Furlong  inserted." 

It  was  of  course  plain  enough  that  certain 
of  the  aldermen  of  the  old  council  were  to  be 
reckoned  as  part  of  the  cohort  of  darkness. 
That  at  least  was  clear.  "We  want  no  more 
men  in  control  of  the  stamp  of  Alderman  Gor- 
finkel  and  Alderman  Schwefeldampf,"  so  said 
practically  every  paper  in  the  city.  "The  pub- 
lic sense  revolts  at  these  men.  They  are  vul- 
tures who  have  feasted  too  long  on  the  pros- 
trate corpses  of  our  citizens."  And  so  on. 
The  only  trouble  was  to  discover  who  or  what 
had  ever  supported  Alderman  Gorfinkel  and 
Alderman  Schwefeldampf.  The  very  organisa- 
tions that  might  have  seemed  to  be  behind  them 
were  evidently  more  eager  for  clean  government 
than  the  league  itself. 

"The  Thomas  Jefferson  Club  Out  for  Clean 
Government,"  so  ran  the  newspaper  headings 
of  one  day;  and  of  the  next,  "JVill  help  to 
clean  up  City  Government.  Eureka  Club  (Col- 
oured) endorses  the  League;  Is  done  zvith 
Darkness;"  and  the  day  after  that,  "Sons  of 
Hungary  Share  in  Good  Work:  Kossuth  Club 
will  vote  with  the  League." 

So  strong,  indeed,  was  the  feeling  against 

the  iniquitous  aldermen  that  the  public  demand 

arose  to  be  done  with  a  council  of  aldermen 

altogether  and  to  substitute  government  by  a 

297 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

Board.  The  newspapers  contained  editorials 
on  the  topic  each  day  and  it  was  understood 
that  one  of  the  first  efforts  of  the  league  would 
be  directed  towards  getting  the  necessary  sanc- 
tion of  the  legislature  in  this  direction.  To 
help  to  enlighten  the  public  on  what  such  gov- 
ernment meant  Professor  Proaser  of  the  uni- 
versity (he  was  one  of  the  three  already  re- 
ferred to)  gave  a  public  lecture  on  the  growth 
of  Council  Government.  He  traced  it  from 
the  Amphictionic  Council  of  Greece  as  far  down 
as  the  Oligarchical  Council  of  Venice;  it  was 
thought  that  had  the  evening  been  longer  he 
would  have  traced  it  clean  down  to  modern 
times. 

But  most  amazing  of  all  was  the  announce- 
ment that  was  presently  made,  and  endorsed 
by  Mr.  Lucullus  Fyshe  in  an  interview,  that 
Mayor  McGrath  himself  would  favour  clean 
government,  and  would  become  the  official 
nominee  of  the  league  itself.  This  certainly 
was  strange.  But  it  would  perhaps  have  been 
less  mystifying  to  the  public  at  large,  had 
they  been  able  to  listen  to  certain  of  the  inti- 
mate conversations  of  Mr.  Fyshe  and  Mr. 
Boulder. 

"You  say  then,"  said  Mr.  Boulder,  "to  let 
McGrath's  name  stand." 

"We  can't  do  without  him,"  said  Mr.  Fyshe, 
"he  has  seven  of  the  wards  in  the  hollow  of 
298 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

his  hand.  If  we  take  his  offer  he  absolutely 
pledges  us  every  one  of  them." 

"Can  you  rely  on  his  word?"  said  Mr. 
Boulder. 

"I  think  he  means  to  play  fair  with  us," 
answered  Mr.  Fyshe.  "I  put  it  to  him  as  a 
matter  of  honour,  between  man  and  man,  a 
week  ago.  Since  then  I  have  had  him  carefully 
dictaphoned  and  I'm  convinced  he's  playing 
straight." 

"How  far  will  he  go  with  us?"  said  Mr. 
Boulder. 

"He  is  willing  to  throw  overboard  Gor- 
finkel,  Schwefeldampf  and  Undercutt.  He  says 
he  must  find  a  place  for  O'Hooligan.  The 
Irish,  he  says,  don't  care  for  clean  government; 
they  want  Irish  Government." 

"I  see,"  said  Mr.  Boulder  very  thoughtfully, 
"and  in  regard  to  the  renewal  of  the  franchise 
and  the  expropriation,  tell  me  just  exactly  what 
his  conditions  are." 

But  Mr.  Fyshe's  answer  to  this  was  said 
so  discreetly  and  in  such  a  low  voice,  that  not 
even  the  birds  listening  in  the  elm  trees  out- 
side the  Mausoleum  Club  could  hear  it. 

No  wonder  then  that  if  even  the  birds  failed 
to  know  everything  about  the  Clean  Govern- 
ment League,  there  were  many  things  which 
such  good  people  as  Mr.  Newberry  and  Mr. 
399 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

Peter  Spillikins  never  heard  at  all  and  never 
guessed. 

Each  week  and  every  day  brought  fresh  tri- 
umphs to  the  onward  march  of  the  movement. 

"Yes,  gentlemen,"  said  Mr.  Fyshe  to  the 
assembled  committee  of  the  Clean  Government 
League  a  few  days  later,  "I  am  glad  to  be  able 
to  report  our  first  victory.  Mr.  Boulder  and 
I  have  visited  the  state  capital  and  we  are 
able  to  tell  you  definitely  that  the  legislature 
will  consent  to  change  our  form  of  government 
so  as  to  replace  our  council  by  a  Board." 

"Hear,  hear!"  cried  all  the  committee  men 
together. 

"We  saw  the  governor,"  said  Mr.  Fyshe. 
"Indeed  he  was  good  enough  to  lunch  with  us 
at  the  Pocahontas  Club.  He  tells  us  that  what 
we  are  doing  is  being  done  in  every  city  and 
town  of  the  state.  He  says  that  the  days  of 
the  old-fashioned  city  council  are  numbered. 
They  are  setting  up  boards  everywhere." 

"Excellent!"  said  Mr.  Newberry. 

"The  governor  assures  us  that  what  we  want 
will  be  done.  The  chairman  of  the  Demo- 
cratic State  Committee  (he  was  good  enough 
to  dine  with  us  at  the  Buchanan  Club)  has 
given  us  the  same  assurance.  So  also  does  the 
chairman  of  the  Republican  State  Committee, 
who  was  kind  enough  to  be  our  guest  in  a  box 
at  the  Lincoln  Theatre.  It  is  most  gratifying," 
300 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

concluded  Mr.  Fyshe,  "to  feel  that  the  legis- 
lature will  give  us  such  a  hearty,  such  a  thor- 
oughly American  support." 

"You  are  sure  of  this,  are  you?"  questioned 
Mr.  Newberry.  "You  have  actually  seen  the 
members  of  the  legislature?" 

"It  was  not  necessary,"  said  Mr.  Fyshe. 
"The  governor  and  the  different  chairmen  have 
them  so  well  fixed, — that  is  to  say,  they  have 
such  confidence  in  the  governor  and  their  politi- 
cal organisers  that  they  will  all  be  prepared  to 
give  us  what  I  have  described  as  a  thoroughly 
American  support." 

"You  are  quite  sure,"  persisted  Mr.  New- 
berry, "about  the  governor  and  the  others  you 
mentioned?" 

Mr.  Fyshe  paused  a  moment  and  then  he 
said  very  quietly,  "We  are  quite  sure,"  and  he 
exchanged  a  look  with  Mr.  Boulder  that  meant 
volumes  to  those  who  would  read  it. 

"I  hope  you  didn't  mind  my  questioning  you 
in  that  fashion,"  said  Mr.  Newberry,  as  he 
and  Mr.  Fyshe  strolled  home  from  the  club. 
"The  truth  is  I  didn't  feel  sure  in  my  own 
mind  just  what  was  meant  by  a  'Board,'  and 
'getting  them  to  give  us  government  by  a 
Board.'  I  know  I'm  speaking  like  an  igno- 
ramus. I've  really  not  paid  as  much  attention 
in  the  past  to  civic  politics  as  I  ought  to  have. 
301 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

But  what  is  the  difference  between  a  council 
and  board?" 

"The  difference  between  a  council  and  a 
board?"  repeated  Mr.  Fyshe. 

"Yes,"  said  Mr.  Newberry,  "the  difference 
between  a  council  and  a  board." 

"Or  call  it,"  said  Mr.  Fyshe  reflectively, 
"the  difference  between  a  board  and  a  council." 

"Precisely,"  said  Mr.  Newberry. 

"It's  not  altogether  easy  to  explain,"  said  Mr. 
Fyshe.  "One  chief  difference  is  that  in  the 
case  of  a  board,  sometimes  called  a  Commis- 
sion, the  salary  is  higher.  You  see  the  salary 
of  an  alderman  or  councillor  in  most  cities  is 
generally  not  more  than  fifteen  hundred  or  two 
thousand  dollars.  The  salary  of  a  member  of 
a  board  or  commission  is  at  least  ten  thousand. 
That  gives  you  at  once  a  very  different  class  of 
men.  As  long  as  you  only  pay  fifteen  hundred 
you  get  your  council  filled  up  with  men  who 
will  do  any  kind  of  crooked  work  for  fifteen 
hundred  dollars;  as  soon  as  you  pay  ten  thou- 
sand you  get  men  with  larger  ideas." 

"I  see,"  said  Mr.  Newberry. 

"If  you  have  a  fifteen  hundred  dollar  man," 
Mr.  Fyshe  went  on,  "you  can  bribe  him  at  any 
time  with  a  fifty  dollar  bill.  On  the  other  hand 
your  ten  thousand  dollar  man  has  a  wider  out- 
look. If  you  offer  him  fifty  dollars  for  his 
vote  on  the  board,  he'd  probably  laugh  at  you." 

302 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

"Ah,  yes,"  said  Mr.  Newberry,  "I  see  the 
idea.  A  fifteen  hundred  dollar  salary  is  so  low 
that  it  will  tempt  a  lot  of  men  into  office  merely 
for  what  they  can  get  out  of  it." 

"That's  it  exactly,"  answered  Mr.  Fyshe. 

From  all  sides  support  came  to  the  new 
league.  The  women  of  the  city, — ^there  were 
fifty  thousand  of  them  on  the  municipal  voters* 
list, — were  not  behind  the  men.  Though  not 
officials  of  the  league  they  rallied  to  its  cause. 

"Mr.  Fyshe,"  said  Mrs.  Buncomhearst,  who 
called  at  the  office  of  the  president  of  the  league 
with  offers  of  support,  "tell  me  what  we  can 
do.  I  represent  fifty  thousand  women  voters 
of  this  city, " 

(This  was  a  favourite  phrase  of  Mrs.  Bun- 
comhearst's,  though  it  had  never  been  made 
quite  clear  how  or  why  she  represented  them.) 

"We  want  to  help,  we  women.  You  know 
we've  any  amount  of  initiative,  if  you'll  only 
tell  us  what  to  do.  You  know,  Mr.  Fyshe, 
we've  just  as  good  executive  ability  as  you 
men,  if  you'll  just  tell  us  what  to  do.  Couldn't 
we  hold  a  meeting  of  our  own,  all  our  own, 
to  help  the  league  along?" 

"An  excellent  idea,"  said  Mr.  Fyshe. 

"And  could  you  not  get  three  or  four  men 
to  come  and  address  it  so  as  to  stir  us  up?" 
asked  Mrs.  Buncomhearst  anxiously. 
303 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

"Oh,  certainly,"  said  Mr.  Fyshe. 

So  it  was  known  after  this  that  the  women 
were  working  side  by  side  with  the  men.  The 
tea  rooms  of  the  Grand  Palaver  and  the  other 
hotels  were  filled  with  them  every  day,  busy 
for  the  cause.  One  of  them  even  invented  a 
perfectly  charming  election  scarf  to  be  worn 
as  a  sort  of  badge  to  show  one's  allegiance: 
and  its  great  merit  was  that  it  was  so  fashioned 
that  it  would  go  with  anything. 

"Yes,"  said  Mr.  Fyshe  to  his  committee,  "one 
of  the  finest  signs  of  our  movement  is  that  the 
women  of  the  city  are  with  us.  Whatever  we 
may  think,  gentlemen,  of  the  question  of 
woman's  rights  in  general, — and  I  think  we 
know  what  we  do  think, — there  is  no  doubt  that 
the  influence  of  women  makes  for  purity  in  civic 
politics.  I  am  glad  to  inform  the  committee 
that  Mrs.  Buncomhearst  and  her  friends  have 
organised  all  the  working  women  of  the  city 
who  have  votes.  They  tell  me  that  they  have 
been  able  to  do  this  at  a  cost  as  low  as  five  dol- 
lars per  woman.  Some  of  the  women, — for- 
eigners of  the  lower  classes  whose  sense  of  po- 
litical morality  is  as  yet  imperfectly  developed, 
— have  been  organised  at  a  cost  as  low  as  one 
dollar  per  vote.  But  of  course  with  our  native 
American  women,  with  a  higher  standard  of 
education  and  morality,  we  can  hardly  expect 
to  do  it  as  low  as  that." 


304 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

Nor  were  the  women  the  only  element  of 
support  added  to  the  league. 

"Gentlemen,"  reported  Dr.  Boomer,  the 
president  of  the  university,  at  the  next  com- 
mittee meeting,  "I  am  glad  to  say  that  the 
spirit  which  animates  us  has  spread  to  the 
students  of  the  university.  They  have  organ- 
ised, entirely  by  themselves  and  on  their  own 
account,  a  Students'  Fair  Play  League  which 
has  commenced  its  activities.  I  understand 
that  they  have  already  ducked  Alderman  Gor- 
finkel  in  a  pond  near  the  university.  I  believe 
they  are  looking  for  Alderman  Schwefeldampf 
to-night.  I  understand  they  propose  to  throw 
him  into  the  reservoir.  The  leaders  of  them, 
— a  splendid  set  of  young  fellows, — have  given 
me  a  pledge  that  they  will  do  nothing  to  bring 
discredit  on  the  university." 

"I  think  I  heard  them  on  the  street  last 
night,"  said  Mr.  Newberry. 

"I  believe  they  had  a  procession,"  said  the 
president. 

"Yes,  I  heard  them;  they  were  shouting 
*Rah!  rahl  rah!  Clean  Government!  Clean 
Government !  Rah  1  rah  V  It  was  really  Inspir- 
ing to  hear  them." 

"Yes,"  said  the  president,  "they  are  banded 
together  to  put  down  all  the  hoodlumism  and 
disturbance  on  the  street  that  has  hitherto  dis- 
graced our  municipal  elections.    Last  night,  as 
30s 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

a  demonstration,  they  upset  two  street  cars  and 
a  milk  waggon." 

"I  heard  that  two  of  them  were  arrested," 
said  Mr.  Dick  Overend. 

"Only  by  an  error,"  said  the  president. 
"There  was  a  mistake.  It  was  not  known  that 
they  were  students.  The  two  who  were  arrested 
were  smashing  the  windows  of  the  car,  after 
it  was  upset,  with  their  hockey  sticks.  A  squad 
of  police  mistook  them  for  rioters.  As  soon 
as  they  were  taken  to  the  police  station,  the 
mistake  was  cleared  up  at  once.  The  chief  of 
police  telephoned  an  apology  to  the  university. 
I  believe  the  league  is  out  again  to-night  look- 
ing for  Alderman  Schwefeldampf.  But  the 
leaders  assure  me  there  will  be  no  breach 
of  the  peace  whatever.  As  I  say,  I  think 
their  idea  is  to  throw  him  into  the  reser- 
voir." 

•  •  •  •  « 

In  the  face  of  such  efforts  as  these,  oppo- 
sition itself  melted  rapidly  away.  The  Plu- 
torian  Times  was  soon  able  to  announce  that 
various  undesirable  candidates  were  abandon- 
ing the  field.  "Alderman  Gorfinkel,"  it  said, 
"who,  it  will  be  recalled,  was  thrown  into  a 
pond  last  week  by  the  students  of  the  college, 
was  still  confined  to  his  bed  when  interviewed 
by  our  representative.  Mr.  Gorfinkel  stated 
that  he  should  not  offer  himself  as  a  candidate 

306 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

in  the  approaching  election.  He  was,  he  said, 
weary  of  civic  honours.  He  had  had  enough. 
He  felt  it  incumbent  on  him  to  step  out  and 
make  way  for  others  who  deserved  their  turn 
as  well  as  himself:  in  future  he  proposed 
to  confine  his  whole  attention  to  his  Misfit 
Semi-Ready  Establishment  which  he  was 
happy  to  state  was  offering  as  nobby  a  line 
of  early  fall  suiting  as  was  ever  seen  at  the 
price." 

•  •  •  •  • 

There  is  no  need  to  recount  here  in  detail 
the  glorious  triumph  of  the  election  day  itself. 
It  will  always  be  remembered  as  the  purest, 
cleanest  election  ever  held  in  the  precincts  of 
the  city.  The  citizens'  organisation  turned  out 
in  overwhelming  force  to  guarantee  that  it 
should  be  so.  Bands  of  Dr.  Boomer's  students, 
armed  with  baseball  bats,  surrounded  the  polls 
to  guarantee  fair  play.  Any  man  wishing  to 
cast  an  unclean  vote  was  driven  from  the  booth : 
all  those  attempting  to  introduce  any  element  of 
brute  force  or  rowdyism  into  the  election  were 
cracked  over  the  head.  In  the  lower  part  of 
the  town  scores  of  willing  workers,  recruited 
often  from  the  humblest  classes,  kept  order  with 
pickaxes.  In  every  part  of  the  city  motor  cars, 
supplied  by  all  the  leading  business  men,  law- 
yers, and  doctors  of  the  city,  acted  as  patrols 
to  see  that  no  unfair  use  should  be  made  of 
307 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

other  vehicles  in  carrying  voters  to  the  polls. 
It  was  a  foregone  victory  .from  the  first, — 
overwhelming  and  complete.  The  cohorts  of 
darkness  were  so  completely  routed  that  it  was 
practically  impossible  to  find  them.  As  it  fell 
dusk  the  streets  were  filled  with  roaring  and 
surging  crowds  celebrating  the  great  victory  for 
clean  government,  while  in  front  of  every 
newspaper  office  huge  lantern  pictures  of 
Mayor  McGrath,  the  Champion  of  Pure  Gov- 
ernment, and  O.  Skinyer,  the  People's  Solicitor, 
and  the  other  nominees  of  the  league,  called 
forth  cheer  after  cheer  of  frenzied  enthusiasm. 

They  held  that  night  in  celebration  a  great 
reception  at  the  Mausoleum  Club  on  Plutoria 
Avenue,  given  at  its  own  suggestion  by  the  city. 
The  city  indeed  insisted  on  it. 

Nor  was  there  ever  witnessed  even  in  that 
home  of  art  and  refinement  a  scene  of  greater 
charm.  In  the  spacious  corridor  of  the  club 
a  Hungarian  band  wafted  Viennese  music  from 
Tyrolese  flutes  through  the  rubber  trees.  There 
was  champagne  bubbling  at  a  score  of  side- 
boards where  noiseless  waiters  poured  it  into 
goblets  as  broad  and  flat  as  floating  water-lily 
leaves.  And  through  it  all  moved  the  shepherds 
and  shepherdesses  of  that  beautiful  Arcadia — 
the  shepherds  in  their  Tuxedo  jackets,  with  vast 
white  shirt-fronts  broad  as  the  map   of  Af- 

308 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

rica,  with  spotless  white  waistcoats  girdling 
their  equators,  wearing  heavy  gold  watch-chains 
and  little  patent  shoes  blacker  than  sin  itself, 
— and  the  shepherdesses  in  foaming  billows  of 
silks  of  every  colour  of  the  kaleidoscope,  their 
hair  bound  with  glittering  headbands  or  coiled 
with  white  feathers,  the  very  symbol  of  munici- 
pal purity.  One  would  search  in  vain  the  pages 
of  pastoral  literature  to  find  the  equal  of  it. 

And  as  they  talked  the  good  news  spread 
from  group  to  group  that  it  was  already  known 
that  the  new  franchise  of  the  Citizens'  Light 
was  to  be  made  for  two  centuries  so  as  to  give 
the  company  a  fair  chance  to  see  what  it  could 
do.  At  the  word  of  it,  the  grave  faces  of  manly 
bondholders  flushed  with  pride,  and  the  soft 
eyes  of  listening  shareholders  laughed  back  in 
joy.  For  they  had  no  doubt  or  fear,  now  that 
clean  government  had  come.  They  knew  what 
the  company  could  do. 

Thus  all  night  long,  outside  of  the  club,  the 
soft  note  of  the  motor  horns  arriving  and  de- 
parting wakened  the  sleeping  leaves  of  the  elm 
trees  with  their  message  of  good  tidings.  And 
all  night  long,  within  its  lighted  corridors,  the 
bubbling  champagne  whispered  to  the  listen- 
ing rubber  trees  of  the  new  salvation  of  the 
city.  So  the  night  waxed  and  waned  till  the 
slow  day  broke,  dimming  with  its  cheap  prosaic 
glare  the  shaded  beauty  of  the  artificial  light, 
309 


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich 

and  the  people  of  the  city — the  best  of  them, — 
drove  home  to  their  well-earned  sleep,  and  the 
others, — in  the  lower  parts  of  the  city, — rose  to 
their  daily  toil. 


FINIS 


SK> 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY,  LOS  ANGELES 

COLLEGE  LIBRARY 

This  book  is  due  on  the  last  date  stamped  below. 


Ot&5-,«6i 


Oo«rt» 


oon^f 


Jo«k  Slip-25m-9,'59(A477284)4280 


'101/H76 
.50 


UCLA^College  Ubrary 

PR  6023  L46a  1914 


iiiliiilliiliMlHiilllll  IHII 

L  005  717  471  6 


UC  SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  UBRARY  FACILITY 


A     001  187  401     3 


Coll^ie 
Library 


PR 

6023 

191^ 


